Malware, hackers, and data breaches. These are the cyber threats that probably keep you up at night. But, sadly enough, you haven’t realized the real threat yet… the one that will have you sweating, sleepless, and running for the hills… your employees. And here’s why.

Accidents

Accidents happen, and there’s really no way to avoid them forever. Your employees will make mistakes; they will drop the ball, and they will do things they shouldn’t. And when all of these accidents happen, the security of your network and all of its data might be the ones to take the fall for it – which is never a good thing.

So while you can’t avoid accidents forever, you can decrease the number of accidents you come across. To do this, you’ll need to keep cyber security top-of-mind for your employees, which means you should routinely train them on the basics of cyber security and regularly inform them of prominent cyber threats.

Anger

Unfortunately, humans can sometimes be rather volatile creatures. They get upset, and they might lash out – something your business is not immune to. Your employees could very well be the cyber threat in human form. Deleting your data. Selling it to another company. Downloading a virus. Handing over admin logins to a hacker. It is what it is, and you can’t really stop someone from getting angry with you, another employee, or your business.

However, you can prevent that anger from destroying your business, data, or network. Careful control of rights and quick responses to access after a “situation” can help your business avoid vindictive employees from gaining the upper-hand on your business.

Ignorance

Sometimes people just don’t know any better. They don’t understand that A plus B will cause C to happen, and because of that, they will consistently combine A and B to make C happen – whether it’s detrimental to your business or not. At this point, you can’t really blame anyone but yourself and your own company.

It is your responsibility to make sure your employees know what not to do – don’t download documents from sketchy emails, don’t click on ads that are too good to be true, don’t write down passwords on a sticky note, and so on and so forth. As it is with preventing accidents, you must train your employees and keep cyber security top-of-mind to keep ignorance at bay. But you need to go a step further than that. If you want your employees to truly care about the security of your network, then they need to know the “why” behind it all. Why does cyber security matter?