Securing Your Business from Within: How Data Security Starts with Employee Education

As the lifeblood of any organization, employees can be your most important asset. However, they can also be a data security risk when working with confidential information such as customer’s personally identifiable information, unreleased sales figures, and strategy briefs. When this data is put in untrained hands, it can become a source of a breach. According to Verizon’s 2024 Data Breach Investigation Report, 68% of breaches involved a human element, including social engineering attacks, errors, or misuse — often resulting in significant financial and reputational damage to an organization.

The good news is your workforce is also your most valuable resource in data security. With proper training and comprehensive policies and procedures, employees can be your first line of defense in the prevention and detection of information theft and fraud.

Why Employee Education Matters

Since employees are targets for bad actors, a successful data security plan should teach them how to identify and avoid both physical and digital risks to help minimize the potential impacts of these common occurrences.

To help protect your customers and business, ongoing employee education should cover key concepts for safeguarding the company’s data, systems, and business processes, including:

• Protecting against Phishing and Social Engineering: This involves manipulating individuals into revealing sensitive information or performing actions that compromise security. It may employ malware delivery or credential attacks to gain unauthorized access to systems.
• Detecting Fraud: According to the 2024 Report to the Nations, tips are twice as likely to come from employees who received fraud awareness training as from employees who did not. The report found that 67% of employee whistleblowers had fraud awareness training. 
• Safe Internet Browsing: The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) suggests best practices for browsing include creating strong passwords, establishing appropriate Internet use guidelines, and controlling physical access to computers, such as locking up laptops when they are not in use.

Practices and Policies to Protect Your Company

The price of data breaches is at an all-time high, with an average cost of more than 4.45 million USD globally and more than 9.36 million USD in the U.S. Taking proactive measures is your best defense. Along with regular employee training, stay up to date on industry regulations and best practices, including:

• Protecting Physical Data: Enforcing a clean desk policy, which helps ensure physical documents are shredded or locked away and that all computing devices are protected each time an employee leaves a workspace. In addition, a shred-it-all policy encourages employees to consider if there are any requirements to retain a document (in accordance with internal policy), and, if not, then immediately and securely dispose of it. Instituting similar guidelines for hybrid workplace security is also critical in today’s increasingly remote environment.
• Implement Robust Security Policies: Additional policies to consider include , bring-your-own-device, email, and workstation safety protocols.
• Practice Regularly: Test runs help employees stay up to date on the latest security risks. Businesses can engage in practice phishing emails or social engineering simulations to help employees identify threats and avoid risky behaviors. The more employees can practice identifying potential threats, the more likely they are to make the right decision when it counts.
• Manage Insider Threats: Don’t overlook internal threats. According to the  2024 Report to the Nations, most fraudsters were employees or managers. Stringent access controls and continuous employee training are crucial mitigation tools.
• Develop a Response Plan: A company’s response to a data leak can affect the overall impact of the breach and the potential fallout, such as long-term damage to your reputation. Developing an incident response plan in advance helps organizations work quickly to minimize damage to customers and clearly communicate the situation to stakeholders.
• Enlist a Trusted Third-Party: Business leaders balance many responsibilities, so it can be helpful to have a partner that can help identify best practices. Employee training and policy development requires time and diligence, so adequate support is essential. Small business leaders may lack a reliable source (internal or external) to maintain data and information protection policies and trainings. This is why consulting third-parties, like Shred-it^®, could make a difference in company data security.

Tailored Data Security Support

Shred-it^®’s policy templates and trainings are designed to help businesses of every size educate employees with resources and training that are:

• Interactive: Self-paced online training modules that involve users promote better learning and understanding of the concepts.
• Customizable: Policy protocols are tailored to meet an organization’s unique information security needs so employees at every level have a better understanding of the specific nuance at play.
• Accessible: The easier it is to access the tools, trainings, policy templates, and service information, the more likely employees are to use them. Tools like these are easily available on Shred-it^®’s online customer portal.
• Compatible: When paired with Shred-it^®’s paper shredding service, organizations can help keep their physical information secure and out of the hands of bad actors.

Learn more about how Shred-it^®’s privacy and information security policies, trainings, and resources can help keep your business protected.