The Biggest Cyber Threat In 2023 Can Be Mitigated Through Employee Benefits.

Offering high-quality cybersecurity that benefits employees both personally and as a part of the business ecosystem is the best approach to encourage them to take security seriously.

The most important cybersecurity issues that businesses will confront as 2023 approaches will be on dangers posed by employee-targeted digital risks. This new danger surface shows how assaults can target businesses through personnel accounts, devices, and digital lives. In 2022, security crises at companies like Microsoft, Cisco, Uber, and others began in the employees’ private digital lives, which are not typically protected by corporate-controlled cybersecurity. Our growing desire for enhanced security and privacy is being driven by this issue, whose best and probably only answer rests at the nexus of an IT department’s BYOD policy and HR benefits.

A BYOD – or “Bring Your Own Device” – policy sets out the rules for which employees can use personal devices to access company systems like email and Slack. Many businesses already use personal smartphones as their primary method of cybersecurity for two-factor authentication via SMS or authenticator apps. At the moment, even businesses with strict BYOD policies frequently utilize shoddy cybersecurity safeguards that at best inconvenience users and, at worst, violate their privacy. Giving employees genuine, expert-level cybersecurity tools that they can utilize in both their personal and professional life can solve this issue.

We must delve a little deeper into how we got here in order to comprehend why. In the past ten years, enterprise cybersecurity has advanced significantly. An ecosystem of educational programs that prepare specialist computer security experts has contributed to this progress through the adoption of mature cybersecurity frameworks, enterprise technologies, cyber insurance, legal policies, and other factors. Companies now invest more money than ever before protecting their systems and data. Additionally, using cloud-based software and servers has made it possible for businesses to share some of the costs associated with safeguarding their essential technical infrastructure.

Despite all of these benefits for businesses, consumer cybersecurity technology has not significantly advanced. In terms of the level of their own personal digital security, the average person isn’t much better off than they were a few years ago or even longer. The majority of consumers don’t spend any money on cybersecurity, and those who do tend to buy passive defenses like antivirus and VPNs, which don’t represent how actively and thoroughly experts perform cybersecurity. Most people assume that their bank, email provider, or gadget manufacturer, for example, will be in charge of their digital security and privacy. Assets belonging to the corporation may be affected when these organizations fail.

The pandemic-accelerated remote work trend has encouraged us to carry our work home on our gadgets in addition to the widespread use of personal smartphones to access work applications and email. This creates the ideal environment for malicious hackers to target people in order to damage the companies they work for. Attackers can now use a variety of tools to access sensitive company data and systems through employees, including stolen passwords from the Dark Web, personal information from data brokers, sophisticated malware, and phishing attacks. Employees still use personal gadgets for work even when it’s forbidden. When cybersecurity threats affect your employees, your business is also at risk. Making sure that any devices that might be connected to your business are appropriately secured is the main benefit of BYOD based on strong personal cybersecurity.

Here are a few other considerations to bear in mind if you plan to establish this kind of policy at your company:

• Prepare for a volume increase. Make sure your internal security staff or outside vendors are ready to accommodate an increase in device volume and variety before introducing a BYOD policy. Make sure your IT team has the manpower and expertise necessary to handle the growth in the number of threat-level surface areas to patrol. The same management solutions used for internal devices are probably insufficient to tackle all the problems with personal devices.
• Be active. Your team’s services gather a lot of data on the business and its employees. To be able to detect and protect against threats, you need active cybersecurity monitoring and reaction, not only passive countermeasures. To stop hackers from utilizing exposed data to access your systems, it is essential to implement constant dark web monitoring for data breaches affecting your personnel.
• Privacy first. The main reason why BYOD policies fail is because they don’t respect user privacy, which is why they don’t obtain the adherence to policies and software that are required to safeguard everyone.

A BYOD policy’s main challenge is striking a balance between increased security and everyone’s demand for their own privacy. Installing corporate security software on personal devices may be considered a privacy violation in Europe, for instance, where laws like the GDRP are in place. The same thing is probably going to happen here as the U.S. considers legislation along similar lines. Employees ultimately don’t want corporate IT staff monitoring their private life. Using an independent company that specializes in both software and maintenance of personal cybersecurity is the best approach to address this. As an alternative, certain businesses, such as government agencies, can decide to build their own internal teams and expertise only to handle personal cybersecurity.

However, a BYOD policy should be viewed as an advantage for staff members overall. In addition to the fact that the effectiveness of cybersecurity awareness training is at best debatable, offering employees high-quality cybersecurity that benefits both them personally and as a component of the business ecosystem is the greatest approach to encourage them to take security seriously. This addresses the requirement to increase individual security within an organization while also enabling teams to function independently and privately without putting businesses at risk of cybercrime. Sponsored cybersecurity perks transform this crucial area of compliance from a burden into a reward for firms aiming to secure their assets and become leaders in digital security.

Amir Tarighat, a personal cyber privacy expert and Co-Founder and CEO of cybersecurity company Agency.

Source: https://www.benefitspro.com/2023/01/19/employee-benefits-are-the-solution-to-2023s-biggest-cyber-threat/