Employee Internet Safety: Important Tips to Follow

We all laugh at the Nigerian email scam now, but did you know it still catches a few people a month wiring away all their money?    According to the firm https://www.ultrascan-agi.com/ over $82 Billion, yes that’s with a “B”, has been stolen from people so far.  They state 800,000 online scammers are in the world and its growing at 5% a year. That’s a lot of people after your personal and corporate money.   These thieves are using the Internet in more nefarious ways all the time. It’s time to have a discussion about employee Internet safety.

Ultrascan has some interesting statistics that seem counter–intuitive.  Smarter people are easier to scam and high achieving professionals are the most likely to be defrauded. Be very careful with employee Internet safety in your small business.  Let your employees know the threat is real and they should be careful about the following things on the ‘Net:

• Be very careful when releasing any banking or personal information.  Make the requestor prove they are authorized and have a real need for the information.  Verify who sent the email and ask why they need certain information.
• Never trust a website you’ve been referred to. The fake ones are every bit as professional looking as the real ones.
• Never trust an email or attachments. Don’t open it if you were not expecting it.  Hover your mouse over a link without clicking and see if it is really going to your bank and not some long string of characters ending up in Russia or .ru – Russia tops many fraud lists.
• Read the messages your browser may pop up and don’t install software you are not sure of. In fact, get your IT department involved to block this bad traffic.
• Understand 1 infected PC will try to infect others.  They are not called Viruses for no reason.
• If you think you did something wrong, don’t hide it. Employers, be sure to have a policy allowing the employee to speak up without reprisal.  Good people make mistakes.

Above all, use some common sense. Don’t go to websites you shouldn’t and don’t assume that link from your bank or credit card asking you to change your password is real.

If you’d like to talk more about employee Internet safety, give us a call at 949-462-7001 ext 460 or sales@kmesystems.com.