Are new hires putting your data at risk?

The proliferation of personal devices and powerful consumer cloud services being used for work have removed much of the control that companies once had over their information. This in turn has entrusted individual workers with protecting sensitive business data.

Since employees account for most security breaches, it's important to shift as much of that responsibility and control back to the company.

This can be done by automating some systems and creating mandatory restrictions where needed. For instance, implementing stringent password requirements and required timed updates can ensure that none of your employees are using easily guessed passwords like “123456" for years on end. This goes for the IT team as well.

Moving to cloud services for things like email and productivity apps greatly streamlines the process of getting new hires up and running, cutting down the amount of ad-hoc configuration that must be done and the potential for errors or inconsistency along the way. This can also ease the off-boarding process when employees are on their way out, which is equally important for protecting your business (nearly 30 percent of incidents involve former employees).

Finally, it's critical to work with employees and solicit their feedback to ensure the technology tools provided are suiting their needs. If not, they may turn to consumer solutions for things like file sync and share, which puts company information at risk and out of your control.