A Rant About Why It’s Important to Lock Your Computer

When it comes to network security, there is a lot that can go wrong for your business and countless solutions that you can implement to combat them. However, there are small practices that you can implement on a daily basis to improve security as a whole, so if your collective staff can implement this one easy trick, you might be surprised by how beneficial it can be for your network’s security. This practice? Locking your computer.

Yes, you read that right. A simple thing like locking your computer can prevent some nasty security issues from taking root within your organization. We’ll delve into what these issues are and why locking your computer is a perfectly fine way to put a stop to them.

Countless records are stolen on an everyday basis, and you might be surprised to learn that a significant portion of these records are not from external threats, but internal ones. While you might have a gut instinct to trust your employees with your records, you should not discount the possibility that they accidentally (or even intentionally) expose sensitive information, files, or data to those who might find value in it. If you were to survey your employees, how many of them do you think would tell you that they leave their computers unlocked when they go to the restroom or leave for lunch?

Now, we know that you want to trust your employees, and we do too, but this does not change the fact that these practices do indeed pose a risk. Intellectual property could be at risk and sensitive files could create situations where you are in violation of compliance laws. You might even have an office prankster who engaged in juvenile fun from time to time by reversing the mouse button settings or flips monitors upside-down, and while this might be funny for about twelve seconds, if they do not know how to resolve the problem, it could turn into a massive time sink that leads to downtime and a lot of frustration on their end.

No, failing to lock your computer is basically broadcasting to the world that you don’t care what happens to the files on the computer, and you are essentially giving free reign to whoever wants access to them. This is unacceptable, especially when it takes such a minuscule amount of time to lock your device. All you have to do is hit the Windows key along with L. If you find that you often forget to do this, you can also set your device to automatically lock after a set amount of time.

We recommend that you get into the habit of locking your device, be it a desktop, laptop, or mobile device, whenever you have to leave it unattended for any amount of time. You can even take this practice one step further by making it harder for people to get into your device. This might involve using strong passwords or multi-factor authentication that utilizes biometrics or secondary authentication notifications. All of this combined can be an excellent deterrent for troublemakers, be it the innocent jokester in the office or a thief who has stolen your device.

OnSite I.T. would be happy to assist your organization with implementing these security solutions. Just give us a call at (403) 210-2927 to discuss your options!

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