Your employees communicate with each other internally, as they should. Do they also communicate with external parties, such as clients and suppliers? If so, then you need to secure those external communications the same way you secure your internal communications against data theft and infiltration. The bad guys don’t limit their efforts solely to your internal communications and you shouldn’t limit your security, either.
The Threats are Real
The FBI reports that cybercrimes have increased nearly 300% during the COVID-19 pandemic, thanks to the larger and less secure remote workforce. According to IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report, the average cost of a data breach increased from $3.86 million in 2020 to $4.24 million, due in large part to the increase in remote workers. The situation is bad and getting worse – due in no small part to your employees.
Your Employees are the Biggest Threat to Secure Communications
The reality is that your employees are the biggest threat to your secure communications strategy. A Stanford University study reveals that 88% of data breaches are caused by employee mistakes – often involving the sharing of sensitive information via insecure communications.
A study by Biscom revealed that 74% of workers reported sharing data insecurely with their coworkers. In addition, 60% reported insecurely communicating with external parties. When asked why, a third of those responding said they do what’s easiest, not what’s best. And what’s easiest for most, unfortunately, is communicating via email.
That security risk increases the more employees you have working remotely – and, thanks to the COVID crisis, most companies have grown their remote workforce substantially. Remote work blurs the line between internal and external communications. Employees working from home often use their personal computers and phones to communicate with co-workers – or use their work devices for personal tasks. In all instances, communicating and collaborating from home or a local coffeeshop, over an less-than-secure Wi-Fi network, introduces significant security risks.
Your Employees are Sharing Sensitive Information with People Outside the Company
Employees share sensitive information with each other every day. That information includes customer data, sales data, financial data, confidential plans, and the like. They share this information on phone calls and in video meetings, via email and text messaging, and by sharing files with one another.
Your employees not only share confidential information with one another they also share it with people outside your organization. Sensitive data sometimes gets shared with clients and customers. It often gets shared with suppliers. It sometimes gets shared with others in the industry or with other local businesses. Most of this sharing is well intentioned, some of it is necessary, and all of it puts your business at risk.
The reason is that many of these communications, both internal and external, are less than secure. Unless you have a secure communications solution for employee use, every communication is at risk of being hijacked by malicious actors. Even if you have a secure communications platform on your internal network, your external communications could still be at risk. Sometimes even the most security conscious employees default to communicating with outsiders via email , which is the least secure means of communication today.
All Communications Need to Be Secure – Both Internally and Externally
You can’t ask your employees not to share sensitive information – that sharing is often necessary for successful collaboration, with both employees and third parties. Instead, you need to better secure all of your organization’s communications, both internal and external.
Your first step in securing internal and external communications is weaning your employees off email. The best way to do this is to offer a communications platform that is just as easy to use as email and more secure.
Second, choose a secure communications platform that offers a variety of ways to communicate. Your employees want to communicate via voice calls, video chat, and text messaging, so any solution you choose has to offer those options.
Finally, make sure that your communications platform provides end-to-end encryption for all communications, both internal and external. End-to-end encryption ensures that even if a communication is hijacked in transit, the content can’t be accessed by malicious actors. The sensitive information communicated by your employees remains secure, no matter what.
Turn to Wickr for Secure Internal and External Communications
When it’s time to move your employees from insecure email to a more secure communications solution, turn to the security experts at Wickr. Our secure communications and collaboration platform uses end-to-end encryption and other military-grade security to ensure that text, voice, and video communications cannot be hijacked. With Wickr you won’t have to worry about employees making security mistakes – Wickr protects not just against intercepted messages but also against phishing, malicious file attachments, and ransomware. All of your communications, both internal and external, remain safe and secure.
Contact us today to learn more about Wickr’s secure communications platform for both internal and external communications!