“A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.” This old saying holds true for the parts of a machine, the lines of code in a computer program, and the members of a team. Unfortunately, human beings can prove both fallable and unpredictable in their behavior. Sometimes a behavioral lapse can lead to disastrous consequences for a company, especially when the lapse makes the company’s data vulnerable to theft, destruction, or inappropriate access.

You probably picked your employees with great care, and you may feel totally confident about their personal integrity, reliability, and honesty. But sometimes people change, especially if they decide to carry a grudge (rightly or wrongly) against their employer. Disgruntled employees can misuse their technology access to break into servers, steal data from workstations, leak sensitive information publicly, or even physically destroy hardware.

Temporary workers present a different kind of security concern. These workers may receive data permissions above and beyond what they strictly need to do their jobs. This additional access can allow them to poke into information and programs they shouldn’t go anywhere near. A temp worker who naturally doesn’t feel any great allegiance to your company may also play fast and loose with your IT security by visiting inappropriate websites, downloading malware, and generally practicing sloppy data hygiene.

How do you protect your IT system against erratic employee behavior? First of all, you must compose a written set of computer usage and data security rules. You just distribute these rules to permanent and temporary employees alike, and they must sign off on them. Next, you need to silo your data permissions, granting data access to each employee’s seniority and job description. Restrict temp workers from bringing in their own personal drives or other such devices.

Want more advice? Contact our Austin tech support team!