How to Help Employees Become Cyber Smart.

Advancements in digital transformation and technology, in general, continue driving better efficiency and productivity levels for large businesses and government organizations. However, along with improved accessibility to organization data and resources, there is also a massive risk of cyber threats. Providing adequate employee cyber security training is critical in the modern environment to prevent any data breaches or illicit cyber activity.

Every year, many reports tend to indicate most data breaches, often with very costly consequences, are caused by human error. Despite this known fact, Government/Public sector, along with other industries and organizations still do not offer adequate cyber security training for their employees.

Besides investing in firewalls, anti-malware, and implementing other cyber hygiene practices, it’s also necessary to undertake continuous employee cybersecurity awareness training.

How to Handle Employee Cyber Training

Let’s look at some of the ways to train your employees in cyber security awareness and also the best practices for effective employee cyber security training:

Ensure Employees Recognize the Need for Information Security

Cyber security training works best when the staff realizes the immense value of the awareness process. Workers must understand the common cyber-threats they are likely to face and the need for adequate training and earnest security steps necessary to curb those attacks.

Your employees must appreciate the importance of ensuring robust information security across the organization. It means letting your staff know why data security, privacy policies, data breach, and intellectual property protection is essential, how it affects them, and how to ensure better security. Educating your employees about your specific policies and employee use guidelines form the foundation of organizational awareness.

Raise Awareness About Current Cyber Threats

An excellent layer for employee cyber security training involves raising awareness about the current critical cyber threats. Employees must understand how the ever-changing cyber threat landscape can affect the business and the importance of taking the right actions to minimize vulnerability.

Malware attacks, phishing, and hacking remain commonplace for businesses and government organizations today. Other notable cybersecurity issues include data breaches, ransomware, poor router security, severe hardware and software vulnerabilities, etc.

Focus on Crucial Areas: Social Engineering and Email Phishing

A noteworthy part of employee cyber security training should be educating employees on the various strategies’ hackers use to initiate cyberattacks. The main methods include social engineering and phishing.

Phishing is one of the most commonly used tactics by cybercriminals. Through applying social engineering tactics, attackers trick users into opening malware-laden files or malicious links. These actions could result in an instant ransomware download to the affected device or be part of an elaborate plan to steal highly sensitive customer data or intellectual property.

Other methods of social engineering include vishing whereby a malicious actor will attempt to gather sensitive information over the phone, phishing where text messaging is leveraged to collect information, or physical intrusion where the threat actor attempts to enter the facility in person.

Ensuring employees know about social engineering techniques can further support your organization’s proactive information security program. It places employees in a better position to quickly identify suspicious activities that may point to impending or emerging cyber threats.

Include Everyone in Cyber Security Training

Every employee in an organization is vulnerable to phishing, social engineering, and various other hacking strategies. That means managers, supervisors, vendors, and partnering businesses with access to your company’s crucial platforms can present a cybersecurity weakness. It also implies that employee cyber training must be extended throughout the organization to everyone who accesses its infrastructure platforms. That includes external service providers or consultants and also internal managers and supervisors.

Companies often overlook service providers and contractors. There’s always an impending risk that other people can access your company through third parties and steal valuable data. Hence, you must require thorough information security compliance both internally to your employees and externally to service providers and contractors.

Benefits of Employee Cyber Training

By conducting employee cyber security training, your staff will be better equipped to identify and respond to any cyber threat. This approach limits the risk of cyber-attacks, along with developing a positive culture of awareness. Here are more benefits of cyber training for organizations:

• Increases organizational resilience against various cyber threats
• Creates a positive behavior and mindset change in employees about their role in ensuring information security
• Reduces human errors and mitigates security risks
• Increases commitment from employees towards meeting cybersecurity goals
• Improves your security audit results while demonstrating regulatory security compliance

Employee awareness and response can be tested and reinforced through email phishing, vishing, smishing, and physical intrusion exercises delivered from a trusted cybersecurity assessment partner. Training is not a one and done effort. Because new employees join your team, existing employees can forget and the bad guys come up with new scenarios to hack your employees, training should be done on a frequency to minimize these risks.

Contact SCA for More Information about Employee Cyber Security Training

With reliable employee cyber security training, organizations can reduce and better manage the risks that their staff will be used to access critical data by hackers. SCA offers essential security assessment and advisory services, including penetration testing, risk assessments, employee information security awareness training, and social engineering exercises for optimal cybersecurity. If you need assistance with employee cyber security training, contact us today.