Many organisations don’t realise that the most common source of cyber attacks is their employees. A common challenge is password security. Often, an employee inadvertently opens a phishing email and shares their password details which opens the company’s systems up to potential attack.

Hackers and cyber criminals are becoming ever more sophisticated in their efforts to break into organisations’ systems. They use falsely branded emails and documents that can be very convincing and the links they provide may only have very subtle differences to the ones a user might expect – for example, using a zero instead of a letter O. This is why your business needs to be equally sophisticated in combatting them.

So, educating employees to be vigilant against such attacks is a direct and effective way of preventing them from happening.

Improving password security

If someone successfully breaks into your organisation’s systems and steals user passwords, the consequences can be huge. In many cases, stolen passwords may be sold to the highest bidder on the dark web, opening up your business to any number of attacks. One of the best ways of thwarting attempted cyber attacks is to operate effective password protocols.

Ensuring that employees understand the necessity of regularly changing their passwords and educating them in the reasons behind this is vital. It’s a simple, but effective way of reducing risk.

Similarly, training employees in the need for strong, complex passwords and highlighting the dangers of using the same password for multiple accounts will also be effective in reducing the risk of password theft.

Train your employees, cost efficiently

Educating your employees about the types of attacks and password security is just one way to protect your business against potential attacks. At SDT, we offer web-based training that covers a variety of cyber security issues, with an online training tool that empowers your employees to make smarter security decisions every day.

Our online platform offers a full range of training tools to make your employees more security aware. At the same time, at SDT we can carry out a full system review to ensure that your security systems haven’t been breached and to test the strength of your cyber security mechanisms.

Complimentary Password Exposure Test (PET)

To see the value in our online platform and to identify if your business has any exposure risks associated with your employees, we are offering a complimentary PET test. Click here to access the test and identify users with exposed emails publicly available on the web, and see if they are using weak or compromised passwords that are part of a known data breach. It tests against 10 types of weak password related threats associated with user accounts, checks against breached or weak passwords currently in use in your Active Directory and reports on the accounts affected and does not show/report on actual passwords.

Alternatively, to find out more about online training or our cyber security support, please contact Andrew Wayman at andrew.wayman@sdt.co.uk or call our office on +44 (0)1344 870062.