How To Secure Digital Assets In A Convenience-first Culture?

Security is often considered a hindrance to convenience. To make something more secure usually requires setting limits or preventing users from performing certain actions. It can cause a problem in some situations because people want to do work in the fastest and easiest way possible. It's important to have a good balance between convenience and security to ensure a company is secure and efficiently doing its work. Here are some top tips for securing digital assets in a convenience-first culture that minimally impacts user experience.

Enable 2FA

Enabling 2-factor authentication is one of the easiest things to do to improve the security of user accounts. Fortunately, many platforms integrate this directly into their products and can easily be enabled with a phone or email. This way, whenever you log in, you can easily get the code off of your phone or email and use it to log in along with your username and password. It's a simple and convenient way to protect your user accounts.

Role-Based Access

To be secure, companies try to operate under the principle of least privilege, where people are only given access to necessary resources to do their job. A downside is that many people have to wait days or weeks to get access to do their job when they join the company. They typically need to provide proof to the right people. By assigning access by job role, templates are made for each job title that outlines what access that person will need. This way, every time someone is hired, they will know beforehand what access they need using the created templates. This eliminates the wait time while still ensuring adequate access control throughout the organization.

Have a separate network for guests and employees

Another simple trick is to have a separate network for guests and employees. You don't want visitors to access your corporate network, so it's good that you have two separate networks. Once you're sure to give employees the passcode during orientation, no one will feel inconvenienced by logging into a different network than the guests.

Perform as many administrative actions as possible after hours

Whenever possible, update the software after hours to prevent interruptions to people that are trying to work. A big part of security is making sure that software patches are applied regularly as new vulnerabilities are found. It's best to do these updates outside of work hours to limit the inconvenience caused to employees.

Provide a separate laptop for work

Many people like being able to browse the web during work hours, but this can cause potential security issues depending on what site people visit. If you have employees working from home, which is increasingly common thanks to COVID-19, it's a good idea to give your workers a separate laptop that they can use for work and then add filters to websites you don't want them to visit. By having a separate laptop, people can use their work laptop for work only and use their laptop for browsing the web, which will reduce the likelihood of a security incident for your company.

Conclusion

There is always a trade-off between being secure and being less restrictive. By definition, being secure usually means that you prevent people from performing actions that may pose a security risk, so you can't fully get around that. However, there are quite a few things you can do to make security less invasive. The less invasive your security operations are, the more productive your organization and your employees will be.