Cybersecurity awareness month was created in an effort to raise awareness about the importance of cybersecurity.
With businesses today relying almost completely on virtual operations, your business simply cannot afford not to have strong cybersecurity in place; one single breach could ruin you. A single breach could result in huge data losses, costly downtime and compliance infringements. Considering over 90% of breaches are a result of human error, it is vital to properly train your workforce.
A security awareness training programme is a good way to help your employees gain knowledge and understanding about the importance of security. It will help create best practices and change behaviour towards cybersecurity. In order to create such a programme, you must analyse your business to determine what training is necessary. You should carry out a SWOT analysis and consider the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Some questions you should be considering include:
- What your largest security challenge has been in the past year.
- Do you handle sensitive or confidential information?
- Which department has the most public exposure?
- Which department has had the most security challenges over the past year?
- How most incidents have occurred e.g. through email, social media, personal devices.
Once you have identified these answers, you can begin to create your cybersecurity awareness training programme. To do this, you must look at all the points you analysed and use those answers to create goals. These goals will form the basis of your training plan.
Best Practices for an Effective Cybersecurity Training Programme
Make it Relevant
Your training should be aligned to the most relevant security threats. For example, if phishing attacks have been a problem in the past, teach your employees what to do in those situations. It can be helpful to use real phishing attacks to educate. They can be hard to detect and a template may be too obvious.
Get Management Involved
Make sure that all levels of employees are involved. When managers take cybersecurity seriously, that attitude is more likely to trickle down the hierarchy. Managers’ active participation will show employees that security is a priority.
Emphasise Why it Matters
Highlight the importance of cybersecurity by using real-life examples of the consequences of a security breach. security is everyone’s responsibility; a single human error can lead to a company-wide disaster.
Keep it Engaging
Keep training interactive and interesting. Try doing frequent, shorter periods of training rather than long blocks as this makes it more manageable and less of a burden. Video-based content is a good way to engage.
Be Persistent
Training should be delivered frequently with mini refreshers in between. Once or twice a year simply isn’t enough to maintain and support training. Monthly video-based training modules helps keep security top of mind.
Have a Disaster Recovery Plan
No matter how hard we try to prevent them, disasters happen. DR is about having a technical solution and recovery plan in case of disaster, whether natural or induced by humans. A DR plan aims to maintain critical functions to ensure business continuity and minimise downtime while the disaster is being addressed.
Cardonet can provide you with a comprehensive range of cyber security services to help you stay secure and, at the same time, help you demonstrate compliance with industry and regulatory standards. Discover how we can help you with cybersecurity services.
If you are concerned about cybersecurity and how it could affect your business, call us on +44 203 034 2244 or +1 323 984 8908 Alternately, you can contact us online. We will be happy to help you overcome your IT challenges so that you set your business apart. Cardonet have been working with businesses for the past twenty years to help them overcome their technological challenges. We have engineering bases in the United Kingdom, Europe and Southern California and our group of highly experienced engineers are available 24/7 to assist and ensure that your IT infrastructure is secure and running seamlessly.
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