Although cybersecurity is normally handled by its own dedicated department or falls under IT – it is actually everyone’s responsibility. In fact, HR professionals in particular have an important role to play in improving cybersecurity on several fronts.
If you want your company to be safe from cyber threats, your HR department needs to step up to the plate and play a key role.
Contribute to the Security Policy
Every company that is serious about cybersecurity needs a strong security policy. It should encompass standards of behaviour for any and all activities carried out on the company’s IT infrastructure.
Ideally HR departments should contribute to the design of the security policy seeing as they’ll be heavily involved in its implementation. The role that HR plays includes carrying out recruitment background checks, determining data access controls, and more.
One of the key areas that HR is involved in is employee monitoring. While the cybersecurity or IT departments may be in charge of the employee monitoring software itself, it is HR that can define and communicate the permissions and policies to employees.
Frankly speaking, monitoring tools such as WorkExaminer can track user activities in many different ways – including apps that are run, websites that are visited, file transfers, keystrokes, screenshots, emails, and more. HR can define the data that employees need to perform their tasks, and set up policies on how to restrict that data as well as take action if there are violations.
In that way, cybersecurity or IT can use WorkExaminer’s analytics to find any issues, such as suspicious file transfers or behaviour. HR can be responsible for investigating, communicating with employees or pressing charges before employees can share your data with competitors or breach security in other ways.
Of course with WorkExaminer, HR can play more direct roles too. Most notably HR professionals can save from losses by using it to block off categories of websites that are harmful or a potential threat.
Foster a Safe Cybersecurity Culture
As mentioned previously, cybersecurity is everyone’s responsibility – but HR is one of the most important departments that can make cybersecurity part of the company culture. Simply put the HR department needs to make sure that all employees know how important it is to pay attention to cybersecurity and what they should and should not do.
To begin with, HR can work to instil cybersecurity best practices in new employees. New hires can be a weak link in security as they may not be familiar with the risks that are involved and how to avoid them. Seeing as the first point of contact for new employees is the HR department, it is perfectly poised to instil just how important cybersecurity is and how their actions can impact it.
Aside from that, the data from the HR team monitoring software such as WorkExaminer will let HR professionals check whether the daily actions of employees pose a potential risk. If they do, employees can be sent for cybersecurity training. Needless to say, this is far better than having to send all employees for training en masse – even if there is no problem with their actions.
By fostering a safer cybersecurity culture, the risk of data breaches, hacks, or other attacks can be minimized.
Conclusion
See how big of a difference HR can make to cybersecurity? By letting HR professionals work hand in hand with cybersecurity and IT experts, your company will be a lot more secure in the long run. And seeing as incidents of cybercrime are on the rise, it is all the more critical that you start getting HR involved sooner rather than later.