Does My Business Need Security Awareness Training?

Employees are an organization's first line of cybersecurity defense, so it’s essential for them to be able to recognize the red flags of a digital threat and understand how to manage them. 

WHAT IS SECURITY AWARENESS TRAINING?

Every employee in an organization is a potential target of cybercriminals, who will use any entry point available to worm their way into an organization’s network. Security awareness training educates employees of an organization on how to detect, avoid, and deal with cyber threats.

Security awareness training is not a new concept: organizations that have to adhere to strict governmental regulations have to undergo extensive security awareness training to comply with legislative regulations like HIPAA and GDPR. But, in the current cybersecurity climate, where small and medium businesses are targeted almost as frequently as multinationals, everyone needs to step up their game otherwise they risk becoming low-hanging fruit.

WHAT DOES SECURITY AWARENESS TRAINING ENTAIL?

Knowing is the first step when it comes to being proactive about your organization’s cybersecurity. Security awareness training will teach your employees about the current cybercrime landscape, and how criminals are using technology to break into secure networks. Employees will learn about safe internet habits and hacking techniques like phishing, ransomware, malware, and social engineering, and how to identify attacks and respond to them effectively.

Training can be performed in-person in a classroom setting, through live webinars, or through pre-recorded videos and written guides. But, it’s not enough to simply educate employees on cybersecurity best practices. You also have to test them on it.

The company handling your security awareness training should supplement the educational content with tests. The easiest way to see gauge comprehension among a group of employees who have taken a security awareness seminar is to send out a simulated cyber attack. This generally takes the form of a phishing email that gets sent some time after the seminar. Ideally, employees will react suspiciously to the phishing email and report it. However, if employees fall for the email, then that indicates that more frequent training is needed.

A good cybersecurity awareness training regimen will include both an educational side and a testing side to ensure that the information shared with employees has been fully absorbed and retained. Technology evolves rapidly, and cybercriminals are keeping up the pace by reinventing themselves and finding new ways to compromise networks. This means that security awareness training has to be an ongoing routine within every organization to ensure that employees are kept informed and are taught the most up-to-date, effective methods to protect themselves against cybercrime.

WILL MY BUSINESS BENEFIT FROM SECURITY AWARENESS TRAINING?

After undergoing security awareness training, employees should be well equipped to identify and handle any suspicious information and communications that come their way. Having a prepared, informed, and proactive employee force is just another important part of what should be a holistic approach to cybersecurity that includes the use of antivirus software and dark web monitoring to defend your company data and network.

If you want to learn more about how to defend your business against cybercrime, please reach out