Cybersecurity is becoming increasingly crucial for businesses in all industries owing to the increasing number and complexity of cyber threats. The latest studies by the University of Maryland’s School of Engineering report that up to 2,200 cyber attacks happen daily, translating to about one attack every 39 seconds. Even with the latest cybersecurity technologies, you need another layer of protection — the human firewall.
A human firewall is an effective line of defense against cybercrime that involves equipping employees who interact with your systems with the necessary skills and knowledge to bypass attacks. It aims to minimize the margin of human error that makes organizations vulnerable to cyberattacks. Below, we provide an overview and top examples of human firewalls.
What Is a Human Firewall in Cybersecurity?
A human firewall defines individuals educated with the best cybersecurity practices, enabling them to prevent attacks and report threats or possible breaches. Employees’ lack of knowledge of cybersecurity makes your organization susceptible to various attacks, including phishing emails, malicious ransomware links, pretexting, malware, insider threats and data breaches.
With a human firewall, cybersecurity becomes a shared responsibility for all members of an organization built on mutual trust and support. It boosts employee morale by equipping them to combat sophisticated cybersecurity risks. Human firewalls have numerous benefits for organizations, including:
- Keeping a business and its assets secure.
- Providing a first line of defense for businesses.
- Reducing service downtime that follows cyberattacks.
- Increasing the effective use of your cybersecurity tools and technologies.
Examples of Acting as a Human Firewall
Implementing a human firewall ensures your employees are updated on the latest cybersecurity threats and equipped with knowledge and tools to protect themselves and the company’s assets. They cover many issues, including password policies, email security and personal social media usage, to make staff members accountable for enforcing and adhering to security regulations.
The following are top examples of implementing human firewalls in organizations.
1. Teaching Secure Password Practices
Employing company-wide safe password practices neutralizes the first layer of cybersecurity threats — unauthorized access to company resources. Start by encouraging the creation of unpredictable passwords with a complex mix of characters, numbers, symbols, lowercase and uppercase letters. This makes it difficult for attackers to guess or crack passwords using brute force.
Additionally, employees should be discouraged from using the same passwords across various platforms or words and personal information related to them. Passwords should also not follow predictable patterns or less than 12 characters to prevent being compromised due to predictability. Finally, passwords must be changed regularly to limit unauthorized access to company resources.
2. Organizing Ongoing Cybersecurity Training Sessions
Another popular example of a human firewall involves educating employees, especially those not in the IT department, on the best and the latest cybersecurity training practices. Cybersecurity awareness training involves teaching non-technical employees the common cybersecurity threats and the proactive steps to avoid, prevent and report the attacks.
Some focus areas for cybersecurity training include how to:
- Recognize phishing scams
- Avoid downloading malware and other suspicious software
- Never click suspicious links
- Identify malicious pretexts
3. Establishing Ways for Reporting Suspicious Activity
All your employees should be aware of how to go about reporting suspicious cyber activity immediately to prevent potential breaches. It involves setting up systems that employees use to report suspicious activity and behavior.
Start by teaching employees how to query and challenge suspicious activity. Querying suspicious cyber activity involves double-checking with other organization members when you notice suspicious activity. For example, when an employee receives an email from the CEO asking for confidential information, they should reach out to confirm before putting the whole organization at risk. This spreads the responsibility of cybersecurity vigilance.
The employees should also know how to report any cyberattack attempts to their personal or office phones, emails and text messages. Early reports allow the technical teams to inspect the threats and mitigate the impending damages.
4. Issuing Company Devices to Remote Workers
In the U.S., up to 85% of companies adopt a bring your own device (BYOD) policy for some or all of their employees. While cost-effective, employee-owned devices increase the risk of cyberattacks because only a few companies enroll employees in their backup and recovery plans. In addition, a much smaller number of employers remember to wipe employee-owned devices remotely in case of loss or employee termination.
Personal devices are more vulnerable to cyberattacks and physical loss or theft. Mitigate cybersecurity threats by issuing company devices to individuals that make it easier to install and maintain security tools and software. Company devices also reduce overall operational costs by reducing the costs of servicing the devices.
5. Performing Regular Cyberattack Simulations
One of the most effective human firewall examples for ensuring your employees stay vigilant to cyberattacks is testing them. Cyberattack simulations are fake attacks deployed internally to provide employees with practical training. Deploying regular phishing tests and rewarding them for correctly identifying these effectively creates cybersecurity awareness and boosts their vigilance.
Testing your employees also reinforces what they’ve learned during their cybersecurity training and ensures they can correctly report suspicious activity correctly and promptly. The results from the attacks should be recorded and tracked to help identify gaps and additional learning points.
6. Encouraging Social Media Discretion
Exercising social media discretion is an effective firewall that helps ensure the company’s confidentiality. Employees sharing too much about or from their workplaces may make their employer an easy target for attackers. Attackers often use public information on these platforms to gather data on a business, find high-privilege network access and guess passwords or answers to security questions.
Disclosing coworkers allows attackers to impersonate trusted individuals in a business easily. For instance, employees posting photos with managers or other management officials and naming or tagging them makes it easy for attackers to draft convincing phishing emails using believable credentials.
Get Assistance Implementing Human Firewalls Today
While a human firewall may sound easy to implement internally, professional cybersecurity consultants can help implement the best practices to mitigate your most potent cybersecurity threats. Ascendant is an expert in the area, having been in the cybersecurity consulting and managed IT service industry for over 25 years.
Our scope involves customized employee cybersecurity training to educate and test your teams on common threats and best practices. Our training strengthens your human firewalls, ensuring your employees can identify and report threats accurately and promptly. Schedule a discovery call with one of our experts to learn more about how we can help implement and enhance your human firewalls.
Updated on September 17, 2024