5 Negative Behavioral Effects of Cyber Security on Organization

The effect of individual behavior on cyber-security is essential to the safety and protection of information or data in corporate organizations, government, financial institutions, and all other organizations you can imagine. The risk of breaching has a negative effect and has severe consequences.

The level of discipline applied will be visible on the organizations and the extent at which information and data are safe, organizations or institutions uses vital information in transacting on a day to day activities. It should be noted that with the increasing rate of cyber-crimes and threat one should not relent in making sure there is an adequate measure to guard against cyber theft, threat, and crime.

Therefore our behavior to cyber-security says how safe our personal or organization information or data can be. In respect of this, below are 5 negative behavior and solutions that reflect the strength or weakness of cyber-security in an organization.

Our attitude toward safekeeping of information or data is very essential, insider threat is one of employees behavior that shows the strength or weakness of cyber-security in an organization it could be malicious or an unintentional threat to an organization and businesses which comes from employees, former employees, contractors, who has inside information about the mode of operation and how data is being handled, so employee, ex-staff, senior staff, cleaner, security, IT staff can be an insider threat to an organization.

The solution to insider threat is that once detected prompt action should be taken to remove it, make sure that all risky activities are blocked and employee or staff orientation is done. Install software that will detect malicious or unintentional software on time, investigations should be done to stop a repeat of such.

This is done most times members of staff in an organization and it can have a negative impact on cyber-security and posing a threat to the information or data personally or business-wise.

Illegal downloads have its risk of downloading viruses, loss of data, identity thefts, and slow internet connections, there is no way you would want to know if it is affected by the virus.

The solution to this is that downloads from unauthorized websites by the organization should be blocked, setup measures or securities and make it is with password and passwords should be given to authorized and trusted members of staff, employees should not insert external device and avoid data sharing, preventive security measures should be put in place to reduce and block detected devices.

Inadequate training is one of the behaviors of employees that has a negative impact on cyber-security such that vital and crucial information or data are lost through this medium, every member of an organization from the lower level to the management level.

The solution to this is that employees should have adequate knowledge of what cyber-security, the importance of protecting organizational information, and how to identify cyber-security threats, then what to do when identified, employees should have frequent orientations, internal and external training on how to prevent threats, employees should know the types of viruses and the form in which it can appear.

The importance of adequate knowledge cannot be overemphasized, it is not just the duty of the IT department to protect the organization's information, it is everybody's concern.

Choosing or creating passwords is another critical behavior that affects cyber-security, and states the extent to which information or data are vulnerable to cyber-attack and threat,  and a poor password creation is no doubt one of the behavioral effects to cyber-security. Attackers find these very easy ways to access organization information because employees also do not take it seriously to create a strong password and frequently change their password, even with strong passwords information is still vulnerable to attacks.

A simple solution to this is organizations should give more time to making sure that employees know the importance of having a strong password like (adding an uppercase, lower case, symbols, and number) the need for employees to frequently change their password, and not compromise it, employees should be provided with 2factor authentication and OTP (one-time-password), computers should also have what will prompt password change maybe weekly or monthly. With these measures, information and data in the organization will be protected from phishing, key-loggers and other cyber attacks.

Organizations tend to neglect and forget this part of system protection, employees tend not to pay attention to the little pop-up when it is available, these pop-ups or prompts are ignored may be due to ignorance and therefore causing loss of valuable information to cyber-criminals.

The solution is that the system or device software updated on a regular basis it should not be ignored because it helps to repair computer bugs, new features can be added replacing outdated ones, it also the computer from hackers who can take advantage of the software weakness to attack and get valuable information. So regularly software update keeps your information and data safe and keeps you out of cyber troubles.

Employee behavior to cyber-security cannot be overemphasized and it should not be taken with levity. Technology is advancing likewise cyber-crimes and threats are also increasing rapidly. Our behavior to protecting information and data from cyber attacks is paramount to the growth of an organization.

It is our duty not to throw caution to the wind because the effect of our negative attitude on cyber-security will have great consequences, in order not to be a victim we need to monitor activities and take serious preventive measures