How Businesses Should Introduce Cybersecurity Training

Tuesday, 21 June 2022, 9:44 am
Press Release: Hugh Grant

Cyber-attacks are a growing threat to all business establishments. While vulnerabilities or bugs in software play a role, a more significant flaw exists. Ironically, employees are the biggest threats to companies, not necessarily because of their intentional actions. Usually, employees are the targets hackers or criminals choose to find the weakest links.

Despite such trends, many businesses still take a reactive approach, meaning they resolve issues as they come along. On the other hand, taking a proactive approach means avoiding the potential problem altogether. The only way for a business to take a proactive approach is to develop awareness among employees about the importance of cybersecurity today.

Since this requires a business to build an entire company culture with a focus on cybersecurity, here's what it takes to introduce proper training to your employees and bring your business organization to the next level.

Core elements of cybersecurity-centric company culture

While there’s no one-size-fits-all solution for building a cyber security-aware workplace, you can start by sharing information about the importance of digital safety throughout your organization. Look at your competitors and see what practices they use to develop their digital culture and defenses.

Essentially, building a cybersecurity culture requires following a few vital steps:

• Building trust – to build confidence in digital safety across your organization, you must establish a relationship between your employees and cybersecurity practices.
• Being responsible – each employee must understand their role and responsibility in contributing to overall cybersecurity in your organization.
• Instilling confidence – through proper training, you can encourage your workforce to integrate new cybersecurity practices into their daily duties, tasks, and processes. For instance, a study revealed that many employees break policies out of stress. Such decisions can include delaying software updates to avoid losing momentum in your tasks.
• Improving employee engagement – your workforce needs to willingly participate in cybersecurity training to apply the knowledge and increase the level of cybersecurity in your company.
• Measuring performance – once you have established cybersecurity awareness throughout your organization, you can start measuring the impact by gathering employee feedback on the importance of having strong cybersecurity measures.

These five essential steps can help a business set the foundation for building a cybersecurity culture within a business organization. The main goal is to introduce your employees to the importance of cybersecurity today, the most common cyber threats, and the things they can do to protect themselves and the organization against cyber-attacks.

If your workforce knows all about the things they face daily, it’ll be much easier to create a company culture that encourages digital safety through the latest practices. Your employees should also get a better understanding of the role of your IT department as this can help build trust between them.

Now, let’s see what it takes to introduce cybersecurity training in your company.

Steps to introduce cybersecurity training in your company

Cybersecurity training should increase employee awareness of the benefits of high-end digital safety and how it helps them in their everyday tasks. It should also provide knowledge regarding the potential scenarios and outcomes of cyberattacks.

The goal isn’t to intimidate your employees or force them into something against their will – it’s the exact opposite.

Only by getting a deeper understanding of the importance of cybersecurity will your employees become more responsible, confident, engaged, and invested. Here are three simple steps to get them on board.

Use gamification to make it more fun

While your IT experts may find cybersecurity training interesting, most employees won’t take kindly to it unless you make it fun and convenient.

Instead of mandatory boring lectures on tedious meetings, you can turn it into fun and games by involving every employee in an interactive conversation about the essential things they should know about digital safety.

That includes the steps they can take if they encounter a potential threat, things they can do to prevent a cyberattack, etc. Team up your departments with IT for the best training results and have them create quizzes and questions to make things more interesting.

Control what programs employees install

Of course, employee monitoring software is not a fan favorite. It can make employees feel like their employers do not trust them. Additionally, it might make people feel uncomfortable due to the constant tracking of their activities. However, some oversight is essential. Some solutions could help employers ensure that teams do not install unnecessary or potentially dangerous software.

Offer incentives and rewards

You can significantly increase employee engagement by offering incentives and rewards. Many companies turn their training into an educational course. Once an employee finishes the training part of the course, they take an exam and receive a certification after completing it successfully.

Employees can choose whether they want to continue to upgrade their knowledge and keep earning cybersecurity certifications.

Introduce your employees to the most valuable tools

Many fantastic tools can help your employees detect cyber-attacks, mitigate the associated risks, and prevent situations from escalating into a disaster. For instance, encourage your employees to download VPN services, especially if they use personal computers to perform work-related tasks.

A Virtual Private Network encrypts internet traffic, preventing accidental leaks or interception of exchanged data. Considering employees work from home more frequently, their networks must be as secure as possible. A VPN can help in this case, and more.

Conclusion

Corporate cybersecurity education is no longer an option but a necessity for every serious business today. Your employees must understand that their actions can make a huge difference in protecting your data and operations.

By ensuring they know the latest cybersecurity measures, they’re also protecting themselves, and that’s the purpose of building a company cybersecurity culture in your organization.

Each member of your team matters, and each department plays a crucial role in protecting your organization. Only by working together can you ensure the maximum level of digital safety.

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