The security program of your company must begin with your employees and solid security rules supported by your IT staff and the latest security technologies rather than solely relying on them.
If you’ve got a solid cybersecurity policy in place, you may greatly lower your risk of a data breach and the related losses of time, money, and reputation.
It would be lovely to rely on the accountability of all employees, but in the end, you’re responsible for everything that goes wrong. It’s a guaranteed approach to boost your company’s ability to survive cyberattacks and continue with business as usual to implement security training for all your workers, whether they are IT knowledgeable or not. However, if your cybersecurity advice isn’t use, they’ll be lost in a sea of “more critical” concerns. Alternatively, you could host an annual cybersecurity training day for your employees, but this will result in information overload, and no one will remember anything three months later.
Your employees’ long-term habits can be shaped by regular, bite-sized training sessions that build a long-term security-focused culture in your company. Your staff will become accustomed to cybersecurity awareness, rather than an inconvenience or disturbance, because of regular training. When confronted with danger in the real world, individuals will be better equipped to make quick and precise decisions if they develop this mindset.
Employees and the Effects of a Security Culture
Your company’s cybersecurity posture will not improve if you do a one-time compliance training session for your employees. This year’s meeting may be overshadowed by staff forgetfulness or the discovery of new procedures that weren’t covered in the previous year. As an alternative, an ongoing program of security awareness training can shield your company against an assortment of impending cyber threats.
Based on today’s threat scenario, security awareness training is a critical component of business security:
- 23 percent of data breaches are caused by human mistakes.
- Ransomware is unknown to over a third of employees2.
- Employees have clicked on harmful links without verifying their veracity at least 25 percent of the time.
If you want to get a handle on these data, you don’t need to be an expert at using computers. You shouldn’t have to learn a tonne of technical language or try to hack the hackers to understand this information; it should be accessible to everyone in the firm. As basic as locking one’s computer screen while leaving a workstation unattended and cultivating that behaviour can be the beginning of a new habit. We could spend a fraction of the money and effort on technology to detect when someone leaves their workstation, transmit that information to the computer, and then cause a lockout. A well-trained workforce not only understands and adheres to your current policies, but they can also provide you with fresh perspectives on how to craft your future ones.
How to Conduct a Successful Security Awareness Program
So, it’s easy to agree that a well-trained team is a good idea, but how do you get to that stage in the first place? Until recently, many organizations had to rely on the tried-and-true method of holding a board meeting or video conference and presenting a slide presentation. Once or twice a year, they’d hold these training sessions, and they’d have a little version of it that they could display to new hires.
These “one-and-done” solutions don’t work if you want to build a security-focused culture. They’re boring, overwhelming, and are quickly forgotten due to a lack of follow-up. As part of your security awareness training, here are some items to consider:
To keep your staff engaged, your training should include high-quality videos and interactive elements. To keep your employees engaged, you should only use strictly text content as a supplement to video. Quizzes are a great way to help students remember what they’ve studied and to put theory into practice.
To keep your employees’ attention spans in check when it comes to cybersecurity, you should keep the modules to a minimum. Keep learnings bite-sized and spread them out over the course of the year if you want everyone to benefit. Playing to the room’s shortest attention span is key. It is easier to convey new, more relevant information when the content is broken down into smaller, more manageable chunks.
3Allow employees to learn when and where they want — By allowing your employees to learn at their own pace, you ensure that they won’t miss any of their other deadlines. Even though learning is self-paced, it is still important to keep an eye on it. To ensure full participation, give your employees ample time to finish each module of training and then monitor their progress.
Keeping your training materials relevant and up to date might be a challenge because of the rapid pace of technological and cyber-attack developments. People are likely to roll their eyes if you tell them not to put CDs into their computers from unknown sources or tell them not to post personal information on their Myspace pages. You can ensure that your staff will be able to put what they’ve learned into practice by offering relevant examples in a clear and concise manner.
Using quizzes and simulated drills as a form of review is a good idea. You can tell whether a person has retained the material they were taught by having them put it into practice. If you want to keep your employees aware of the various scams out there, you should conduct mock drills on a regular basis. A refresher course may be in order if folks are still falling for the fake schemes.
The First Line of Defence Can Be Transformed from A Weak Link
To keep your company safe, your staff wants to rely on you, but they can’t accomplish it without your help. If you’re worried that putting in place an effective system of security awareness training will be time-consuming or expensive, you may relax. To make sure you don’t end up wasting your time and money, we’ve previously been down this road with several other companies. We can help you incorporate this training into your company processes and improve your overall security posture. For now, and in the future, you’ll be able to take on any challenges posed by the cybercrime world. To learn more about how to get started, please contact us right away.
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