DPS Gives Back:
Blood Drive with the American Red Cross
DP Solutions is happy to report a successful Blood Drive with the American Red Cross. We collected 21 pints of blood, surpassing our goal of 20 pints.
Thank you to our donors.
Each blood donation can help save up to 3 lives!
If you’re interest in donating blood,
visit the American Red Cross website.
Welcome New Clients!
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In The 4 Cyber Security Trainings You Must Do With ALL Employees
It’s back-to-school season! Soon, our kids will return to the classroom, where they will relearn the information from the prior school year to ensure that they were able to retain that knowledge. There’s nothing wrong with needing a refresher, and this is true for both students and your employees.
If your staff has not had a refresher course on your company’s cyber security practices sometime in the last year, now is the perfect time to get them up to speed. After all, they can’t defend themselves from cyberthreats if they don’t know how. That’s why it’s so important that your team has bought into a cyber-secure culture and is aware of potential threats that could impact your business.
Cyberthreats come in all shapes and sizes, but an overwhelming majority of successful cyber-attacks can be attributed to human error, which is the main reason your employees need cyber security refresher training at least once a year. A lack of training can open your business up to hackers and other cyber-attacks by way of phishing e-mails, weak passwords, unsafe browsing and more – which jeopardizes your entire company. Additionally, in many cases, insurance won’t cover your claims if your employees have not undergone regular training. Finally, customers usually don’t want to do business with a company that isn’t keeping their information protected.
It doesn’t matter how big or small your business is – you must make an effort to ensure that all of your employees have gone through cyber security training. However, if you’ve never trained your team on cyber security and are unsure of which topics to cover, don’t worry because we’ve put together a list of the most important topics to discuss.
Password Security
Nearly every employee at every company has their own login to access the company’s systems, data or Internet. When selecting the passwords for this login, employees need to use strong, unique passwords that utilize letters, numbers, punctuation and other special characters and are not shared between accounts. You should also ensure that your employees regularly change their passwords. For an extra layer of security, you can utilize multifactor authentication so you’ll know that those logging into an account are who they claim to be.
Your employees should be cautious of any e-mails that come from addresses outside of the company. When your employees go through their e-mail, they should not open e-mails from people they don’t know or have not communicated with in the past. Unless they know exactly where the e-mail has come from, they should not open any links or attachments within it.
Social Media
An employee’s personal accounts should never be set up through a company e-mail address. When posting on social media, your employees should be cautious about what they post in regard to work. They shouldn’t disclose private information about your company or your clients on social media. If they did, it could be devastating to your company’s reputation as well as your cyber security.
Protecting Company Data
At the end of the day, your cyber security practices are in place to protect company and client data, and your employees have a legal and regulatory duty to protect sensitive information. A reckless disregard for protecting company information can quickly cause your company to go under and has the potential to bring forth lawsuits.
Establishing strong cyber security practices and ensuring your team is aware of them through training is the best way to protect your business from cyberthreats. By implementing training on these four topics, you’ll be on your way to developing a cyber-secure culture.
“What’s the most important mindset for success in business?”
I was recently asked this question by a video podcaster, and I carefully thought about my response. At first, I didn’t think it was possible to identify the single most important mindset. I find questions that ask for “one thing” tend to oversimplify things. I considered that success usually depends on a number of factors and can’t be broken down into one single mindset, but suddenly, it dawned on me: the one mindset that I have observed in successful vs. unsuccessful entrepreneurs countless times is generosity.
Oftentimes, you will see companies place honesty as their top mindset value, but in my opinion, that’s putting the stakes a little too low. Companies shouldn’t have to remind their employees not to be dishonest. You may also hear businesses putting kindness first, but kindness doesn’t actually bring any value to their customers’ lives.
Companies that put respect as their mindset are on the right path but still fall short of the benefits that generosity brings. To show someone generosity, you are giving them respect while also giving them something valuable. When you actually think about it, leaders who succeed are often generous. They’re able to treat their employees, their customers, their shareholders and the community with a sense of generosity that brings them success. Those who fail to show generosity rarely succeed over the long term. Throughout my experience, I have met many business owners who have seen success and failure through their use of generosity.
I once talked with the CEO of a mortgage company who implied that his business succeeded by “tricking” low-income homeowners into signing up for mortgages that had hidden terms that were unfavorable to them. Once the housing crisis hit in 2008, which was caused by bad players, this guy’s company and career were snuffed out under a pile of lawsuits.
In contrast, I remember talking to Ted Waitt, one of the co-founders of Gateway. I was blown away that a guy like Ted, a cowboy sporting ripped jeans, could create a multibillion-dollar computer manufacturing company in the middle of South Dakota. Ted loved making technology less stressful for his customers while giving people good value for their dollar. His spirit of generosity was reflected in his company culture.
We often think that we need to do everything in our power to bring in more money, but adopting a mindset of generosity is better if you want to see success in life and your career.
Dr. Geoff Smart is the chairman and founder of ghSMART, a leadership consulting firm that exists to help leaders amplify their positive impact on the world. Dr. Smart and his firm have published multiple New York Times best-sellers. He stays active in his community and has advised many government officials.
Being uninsured is a huge risk!
Organizations have come to rely on cyber insurance to mitigate the impact of increasingly sophisticated, disruptive, and wide-spread cyber attacks. As a result, insurers are issuing more policies, and the amounts of protection available are increasing but it is becoming more challenging to stay insurable affordably.
Watch our latest on-demand webinar for an overview of the state of the cyber insurance market.
Watch the On-Demand Webinar Here:
Should I stay logged into a site permanently or log in every time?
You most likely have many websites and applications and systems to remember your logins to, not to mention the number of click throughs and keystrokes associated with authentication. People often wonder if it’s all necessary and whether they should just take advantage of browsers remembering passwords or should they simply never log out of a site at all if they can avoid it.
But is this wise?
If you are concerned about the privacy of your data, it’s probably not a good idea to have this kind of easy access. Granted, this may not be an issue for certain basic websites that you don’t have much invested in, but certainly for social media accounts, bank accounts, work, and many other private accounts, you need to show a higher level of care. If the login is saved, then anyone who can get to the device can have access to any of those saved accounts, multiplying the damage of a potential compromise.
Sometimes, taking the extra step, while annoying, is much less annoying than a significant breach. There are also ways to mitigate the annoyances by using password managers that store and autofill passwords when properly authenticated initially.