We’re in week five of our fITness challenge! If you missed last week’s challenge, you can can catch up here.
Week 5: Documentation
Now that we’ve covered Security Awareness Training, it’s important to talk about documentation and how it relates to the overall security – and success – of your business. Whether it be documenting network diagrams, IP addresses, processes, or usernames and passwords, doing this correctly is critical to ensure your data is protected.
Why is Proper Documentation Important?
Your information and data are worth more than you realize, and cyberthreats are ready to take advantage of any weaknesses they find to breach your account and systems. All it takes is one compromised password to deteriorate your business from the inside out.
In today’s remote-work world, cybercriminals have taken it upon themselves to not only target your employees, but target them while they’re at home working remotely. Therefore, it’s important to go through your documentation process and educate employees on what they can do to protect themselves, and the business.
Other risks involved in poor documentation methods include identity theft, hacked accounts, stolen data and information, financial loss, and a damaged reputation. Proper documentation focuses on storing your information in a secure way that keeps prying eyes at bay.
Tips For Getting Started:
Educate your employees: It’s critical that whatever processes you use for documentation are relayed to your employees. Everyone needs to be doing the same thing, not only for security, but also for cohesion.
Use a password manager: This is a type of application you can use that keeps your passwords in one secure location. Note: this is not the same thing as clicking “Remember My Password” on a website you login to. In fact, we strongly advise against doing this, as there are several vulnerabilities linked to the password storage on web browsers.
Change passwords frequently: You and your employees MUST change your passwords frequently. Of course, this means you must update your documents frequently – which is a good thing. Going through the process of updating your documents and documentation process forces you to continually reevaluate your systems and helps you to find issues that need to be resolved.
Add authentication methods: Make sure your documentation system is protected with multi-factor authentication. Many providers like 1Password or LastPass include this at no charge.
And just in case we need to say it, stay away from documenting on paper or in a Word document.
While proper documentation may not seem like a big issue, it’s critical to the overall health of your IT systems and business. By making this a routine, you will be able to see vulnerability trends quicker, and resolve the issues faster.