Fighting against cybercrime should be a team effort. While an organization is responsible for investing in cybersecurity tools, services, and measures to ensure the safety of all company assets, the staff and employees should also do their part. Hence, it’s crucial to develop proper cybersecurity training for employees as early and consistently as possible.
For example, preventing and avoiding phishing attacks is challenging if employees lack knowledge and education about cybersecurity. Moreover, your workers are the end-users of your company’s data and systems; they remain vulnerable and easy targets to cybercriminals.
Cybersecurity Training Tips
If you spot some loopholes in your cybersecurity practices, it’s time to restructure your cybersecurity training for your employees. This business blog post contains tips to make it more effective and sturdier, including:
- How to define cybersecurity
- Recognizing cyberattacks
- Teaching cybersecurity prevention during onboarding
- Cybersecurity testing
- Using strong passwords
1. Clearly Define What Cybersecurity Is
A sturdy cybersecurity practice starts with a sturdy education about it. To make employees familiar with cybersecurity education, you must outline what is happening in your organization. It’s important to clearly explain and define cybersecurity, especially to those new in your organization. Chances are, they’re clueless about this topic and may be more prone to endangering your systems and security.
When holding a cybersecurity training session, it’s best to keep your technical jargon to a minimum. Suppose you enlisted managed IT services companies who can bring cybersecurity solutions to you like Nens. In that case, you could have a representative present during the training to help and keep everyone on the same page.
Rather than discussing the central network, focus on personal computer security and home network intrusions when discussing external threats. By framing the threat in terms of their phone or laptop, employees can personally relate to it. By doing so, they’ll have a vested interest in the security plan because these practices apply to their daily work and tasks. Finally, when conducting this session, it’s important to implement diverse communication methods and strategies.
2. Teach Staff How To Recognize Cyberattacks
To keep employees safe, they must be educated on cybersecurity. The entire education session comes with different parts, and one crucial lesson is detecting red flags and suspicious cyber attacks. Suspicious emails, pop-ups, or even password activities can all be suspects. An effective cybersecurity training program can include simple email security tips for employees that will allow them to identify harmful activity and take the appropriate action.
Detecting attacks early is the key to dealing with them effectively. Employees should learn to take action before any real damage is done by immediately recognizing these suspicions and reporting them to key people. Teach your staff to be careful with unfamiliar apps or programs installed on their gadgets.
Sometimes, some pop-ups slow down the systems too. When these things happen, the staff should stop working on the device and report it to the IT or managed service provider. Even if the suspicions turn out to be false alarms, it’s still best to be careful than sorry later on.
3. Teach Cybersecurity During Onboarding
New company employees should briefly discuss cybersecurity as early as possible. Cyberattacks can happen anytime, and new employees can easily succumb to these threats. Usually, new employees feel anxious and are still adjusting to their new workplace, and they might not be aware of how damaging cyber attacks are.
New employees may neglect passwords or physical security. Furthermore, they’re easier targets for social engineering attacks as they haven’t figured out who is doing what at work. By raising cybersecurity awareness during onboarding, you can ensure your employees aren’t susceptible to cyberattacks. This is the best way to convey to employees that cyber security is a shared responsibility. They should do their best to prevent cybersecurity issues. Therefore, it’s ideal to suggest they also protect their own data and devices with your tips.
Teach your workers to protect their data from cybercrime by downloading antivirus software and executing data backups.
4. Apply Consistent Cybersecurity Testing
Your training program should include phishing testing regularly. This step is one of the common mistakes that business leaders make. After implementing cyber security measures, they often proceed with their usual tasks and take the importance of assessment and testing for granted. Finally, it’s only a matter of time before a cyber attack penetrates your system easily.
It’s crucial to hold cybersecurity testing as often as possible. In this instance, employees receive phishing emails randomly, and they’re tested on identifying and handling threats. Your training program will be evaluated through this testing to ensure its effectiveness and keep your employees aware of the ever-evolving phishing scams. Finally, after the test and assessments are done, you can modify your strategies accordingly.
5. Teach The Importance Of Using Strong Passwords
To maintain a solid organizational security plan, your organization must follow password best practices. Getting your team on board is the challenge. Therefore, stress the importance of password security during the cybersecurity training program.
Teach your team members to make use of lengthy passwords. Creating long passwords is exponentially more difficult for cyber criminals to decrypt than shorter ones.
Ensure that the password contains different character sets such as numeric symbols, uppercase, and lowercase letters. These elements make the password sturdier. Invest in password manager tools that your entire team can use. Such tools as LastPass or Google Chrome’s strong password generator make it easier and safer to log in. The key is to choose the most reputable password manager provider in the market today.
Also, encourage everyone to change their passwords constantly. Their passwords are more likely to be compromised if they use the same code for the longest time. Hence, create a reminder on your company systems for everyone to change and update their passwords from time to time.
Conclusion
Cyber-attacks are being reported here and there, and many companies of all scales and industries fall victim to them daily. A threat’s impact can be significantly mitigated if detected early. You can prevent and mitigate cybersecurity risks by educating your staff about cybersecurity practices. Make your employees aware of cybersecurity and build a strong defense with these cybersecurity training tips in this article.