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Companies advised to increase employee online security awareness

Organisations have been advised to invest in education and awareness in order to prevent security breaches in company networks.

Experts advise that having adequate internet security protection is essential for any organisation but without proper knowledge of the online threats in existence, the exercise is self defeating.

According to a report on Small Business Computing, employees are the biggest and most common inadvertent vessels used for breaching security defences in company networks.

"E-mail is the primary vector into a company network," said Chris Winn, strategic security adviser at Microsoft.

Most breaches have been occurring through harmless looking email attachments but advances in technology that have seen the proliferation of USB thumb drives have moved breaches to another level.

According to Mr Winn, "Hackers would embed the drives with keylogger and other viruses, and pass them out for free at trade conferences and events".

The workers would then unknowingly infect their PCs by plugging in the devices allowing the keyloggers to steal usernames and passwords and subsequently getting into company networks.

He recommends a number of measures for organisations to take with enhancing employee awareness being a priority.

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