Locked doors, open windows: how simple employee habits lead to major leaks
Most companies spend millions on corporate security, investing in state-of-the-art firewalls, sophisticated encryption, and AI-driven threat detection. We've locked the front doors and bolted the gates. Yet, every year, some of the world's most secure organizations fall victim to devastating data breaches.
The reason is rarely a targeted hacker attack. Instead, it's the digital equivalent of leaving a side window unlatched.
While the IT department is busy hardening the perimeter, the reality of corporate risk often lives in the everyday habits of the workforce. It's the password scribbled on a sticky note, the file transfer via a personal cloud account, or the sensitive project discussed in a public chat channel. In the modern workplace, convenience is the natural enemy of security. When employees find a faster way to get their jobs done, they often unknowingly bypass the very safeguards meant to protect the company's most valuable asset: its data.
In this article, we'll explore the 'open windows' that hackers love most: the simple, everyday habits that turn loyal employees into accidental insiders and how your organization can close them without killing productivity.
Employee habits that multiply corporate security by zero
You can invest in the most expensive cybersecurity suite on the market, but its effectiveness is immediately neutralized the moment an employee prioritizes convenience over protocol.
Let's see which habits open the door to hackers:
- Using private messenger instead of corporate chat software. Very often, employees use personal WhatsApp, Telegram, or Discord to discuss confidential project details or share sensitive files. The IT team does not monitor these personal accounts that lack enterprise-grade retention policies and are rarely protected by the company's Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA).
- AI use for checking corporate contracts and documents. Today, artificial intelligence helps work faster, but while using it, many employees ignore data privacy. They paste unredacted client contracts, internal meeting transcripts, or proprietary code into public, free-tier AI chatbots to summarize or fix them. Most free AI models save this data to train future versions. Secrets of your company could literally show up as a suggestion for a competitor.
- Password fatigue. This mental exhaustion is caused by the necessity to use multiple passwords across numerous accounts. To facilitate their workflow, many employees reuse a variation of the same password for both personal social media and corporate access, or worse, keep a file with passwords on their desktop. If a low-security site is hacked, the first thing hackers do is try those same credentials on social media accounts and corporate VPNs.
- Bypassing VPN for speed. VPN is a must-have tool for remote teams. Still, it may work more slowly and force employees to disconnect for better video call speed or a large file upload. After finishing, they forget to turn it back on while accessing company servers. On public Wi-Fi (hotels, airports, cafes), this makes the connection vulnerable.
How to close the window and raise security awareness
To close the windows and raise security awareness, you must move beyond boring annual training and integrate security into the daily office rhythm. This checklist focuses on raising corporate security awareness:
- Deploy enterprise password manager. Provide every employee with an enterprise password manager. Train them to use the browser extension to generate and auto-fill unique, complex passwords for every single site. This removes the password reuse habit entirely.
- Provide tools that actually work for employees. Analyze why employees use private messengers for communication and collaboration. Offer tools that really work. For example, Virola messenger is a secure corporate chat tool that offers a comprehensive set of features for efficient communication and collaboration: the ability to share files of any size, group discussions, video and audio chats, a task board, and issue tracking. It's a powerful enterprise messenger that can be hosted on-premise.
- Standardize 'clean desk and clear screen policies'. Establish a firm rule that no passwords, MFA codes, or client IDs are ever written on paper. Encourage the use of shortcuts to lock the screen e.g. Win+L, every time an employee leaves their desk, even for a minute.
- Implement training about phishing and malware. Organize a company-wide employee training. Use tools to send safe, simulated phishing emails that mimic current trends (e.g., a fake 'holiday bonus' or 'software update'). If an employee clicks the link, instead of a reprimand, they are immediately taken to an educational page showing what red flags they missed.
Conclusion
We invest in the latest software and the strongest firewalls, yet we forget that the most sophisticated security system in the world still relies on the person sitting at the keyboard.
Closing these windows doesn't require a massive budget or IT skills. It requires a culture shift. This means moving away from a mindset of 'convenience at all costs' toward one of collective vigilance. When we stop reusing passwords, stay within the safety of approved tools, and treat every email with healthy skepticism, we transform from a vulnerability into a human firewall.
The reality is that hackers aren't always looking for a way to break in. They are looking for someone to let them in. By making security a shared habit rather than a solo IT task, we ensure that our digital workspace remains a fortress, not just on paper, but in practice.