Data Privacy Week arrives amid escalating cyber threats, with breaches increasingly targeting organisations and their people. “Take control of your data” highlights a cultural shift from the mindset that data protection is not solely an IT function but a shared responsibility. Risks from human error still fuels 95% of cyber incidents like phishing.
Empower your organisation by cultivating a human firewall – educating and empowering employees to spot and report cyber treats. Empowerment fosters resilience: informed teams protect data, sustain trust and safeguard reputations in a landscape of rising regulatory scrutiny.
Below are our top practical tips for organisations and employees grounded in best practices to keep you and your organisation cyber safe during data privacy week and beyond.
Five Tips for Organisations: Strategic Foundations
- Embed cyber awareness training: Integrate scenario-based learning, such as phishing recognition via tools like ‘Scan for S.C.A.M’, to address human vulnerabilities head-on.
- Develop robust incident response: Adopt structured plans – preparation, identification, containment, eradication, recovery – ensuring all staff know escalation paths.
- Conduct routine security audits: Designate a ‘cyber champion’ for vulnerability assessments and penetration testing to uncover gaps early.
- Cultivate a security-aware culture: Normalise open discussions on risks across all levels, rewarding vigilance over punishment to build enduring habits.
- Interrogate your data practices: Regularly audit holdings, enforce least-privilege access and apply privacy-by-design
Five Tips for Employees: Personal Vigilance
- Verify before acting: Scrutinise links, senders and urgency in messages; report anomalies promptly to disrupt threats collectively.
- Adopt strong MFA: Combine lengthy passphrases with multi-factor authentication on work and personal accounts for layered defence against unauthorised access.
- Maintain updates: Activate automatic patches across devices and apps to close exploitable flaws swiftly.
- Be safe on social media: Avoid oversharing job details, routines or personal info; review privacy settings regularly to limit exposure and prevent targeted scams.
- Manage your data access: Regularly audit and revoke unnecessary app permissions, shared links and account access to minimise what attackers could exploit if compromised.
Data control demands collective responsibility and cyber resilient culture.
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