Narrator: Are you doing everything you can
to protect your customers and your business
against identity theft?
As cyber criminals look for nefarious new ways
to access sensitive personal or financial information,
businesses of all sizes need to fortify their defenses.
That means having policies and procedures to protect data
as well as ongoing education about best practices
and what to do if something goes wrong.
Management and employees should be trained
to know what type of action is required on a daily basis
and what happens if policies aren't followed.
That means you'll need to plan
for situations ranging from who can access what
to ensuring user accounts are terminated immediately
when an employee quits or is terminated.
Make sure each employee has his or her own user account
and limit access to information based on need.
Require employees to use strong account passwords
and that they don't share usernames or passwords.
Also, make sure people aren't writing
their account information down
and leaving it on their desks.
Strong passwords should contain eight or more characters
with a mix of upper and lowercase letters,
numbers, and special characters.
That's because accounts with strong passwords
are harder to hack,
and not sharing any login information helps keep the doors
to data shut.
It's also important to have staff log out
of their desktop computers whenever they're away,
and make sure that they password-protect portable devices,
such as smartphones or laptops.
Require them to report the loss of any device.
You might also want to consider multifactor authentication.
This requires a password
and additional information to log in.
The extra information could be a code sent
to the account holder's phone
or a random number generated by a token or app.
While it might require extra effort
on the part of the IT staff,
you should also lock accounts when a login attempt fails
after a fixed number of tries.
By creating a work culture where security is a focus,
you're protecting both you and your customer,
and that's good business.