Kitchener, Waterloo, Cambridge

Security Awareness Training

"Threat awareness is a state of mind."

Security awareness training has become more important than ever before.

According to IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report 2020, 23 percent of data breaches in an organization occurred because of human error. An untrained employee can compromise your business’ security in multiple ways. Some of the most common errors committed by employees include:
Falling for phishing scams: With the onset of COVID-19, hackers masquerading as the World Health Organization (WHO) tricked people into clicking on malicious links and sharing sensitive information. Cybercriminals are using improved techniques, like spoofed emails and text messages, to propagate the ongoing scam. Your employees must be well-trained to counter it.
Bad password hygiene: A section of your employees might reuse the same password or a set of passwords for multiple accounts (business and personal), which is a dangerous habit that allows cybercriminals to crack your business’ network security.
Misdelivery: Even slight carelessness can lead to an employee sending sensitive, business-critical information to a hacker. Such an act can cause lasting damage to your business, which is why you must be prepared to counter it.
Inept patch management: Often, employees can delay the deployment of a security patch sent to their device, which can lead to security vulnerabilities in your business’ IT security left unaddressed.

Tips to Implement Effective Security Awareness Training

Until recently, companies would impart security awareness training as lectures using a slide deck. Businesses conducted these training sessions once a year or once during induction. However, these sessions proved ineffective because of their uninteresting nature and lack of follow-up sessions.

If you intend to develop a security-focused culture, implementing robust security awareness training is crucial. Here are a few tips that can help you effectively implement security training:
Make the training sessions interactive – Your employees will show more interest if you deliver training in high-quality video format since it grabs more attention. Add text content only as a complementary piece to the video. Ensure that the presentation is appealing to your employees so that they do not miss out on important details. Also, make sure your employees can clear their doubts through face-to-face discussions or virtual conversations with subject matter experts.
Break the training into smaller modules – Since the attention span of your employees will almost certainly vary from one to another, breaking training sessions into smaller modules will help them retain information faster as a whole. You can regularly send training modules to your employees to ensure they are up to speed on the latest security topics. Smaller units have a better chance of retention than lengthy pieces of content.
Facilitate self-paced learning – Give your employees the freedom to learn at their convenience. This, of course, does not mean deadlines should not be set either. Make sure you give your employees sufficient time to complete each training module based on its complexity.
Training must include relevant material – The training material must not contain any outdated information. Given how quickly the cyberthreat landscape is changing, the training must be updated regularly and must cover new cyberthreats so hackers don’t end up tricking your employees. Please remember that the content should not be overly technical. The training material must be imparted in an easy-to-understand manner, so employees have no trouble applying it in daily work scenarios.
Conduct reviews with quizzes and mock drills – To assess your employees’ preparedness, you must conduct regular tests, including mock drills, that assess alertness based on their response to simulated scams.
Regular security awareness training can help develop a transformative security culture within your business, thus enabling your employees to detect even sophisticated cyberthreats and undertake adequate action.
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Cybercriminals are upgrading their arsenal every day and exploring a plethora of options to trap your employees. To tackle this growing threat landscape, organizations must build a security-focused culture that emphasizes thorough and regular security awareness training. We can help to seamlessly integrate security awareness training into your business operations to make your employees the first line of defense against existing or imminent cyberthreats. Get in touch with us today and let us get started.
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