20 Nov Training Your Staff on Cybersecurity Awareness

You’ve heard it before: cybersecurity awareness and staff training are essential tools for strengthening your overall defense posture. But, be realistic: when’s the last time your enterprise developed a comprehensive plan for cybersecurity education? After all, it’s a broad, complex topic, isn’t it?

The reality is, teaching good habits is not as hard as it sounds. Truthfully, correctly implementing and adopting policies is the tricky part. The most important step is to start now. If you’re procrastinating on cybersecurity awareness training or haven’t updated policies for an extended period, it’s time to start.

The Benefits of Cybersecurity Awareness Training

Competency isn’t just a “feel-good” procedure; it’s a beneficial business venture with long-term benefits. Given the wildly changing field of technology, where every innovation brings about new danger, staying safe and competitive means awareness training is essential.

• Awareness training translates to better staff decisions, reducing risk and chances of network breaches
• In certain sectors, awareness training remains compliant with federal regulations, allowing you to avoid financial penalties
• Training focuses on relevant and urgent threats, consolidating “noise” and prioritizing what to defend against
• Creates better confidentiality habits, leading to data protection and improved management of sensitive information

Critical Steps Towards Training

Before anything, it’s important to develop a strong foundational plan. While every enterprise has its own needs and unique infrastructure, there are always several essential steps you can follow.

Manage and Understand Roles

The thing about cybersecurity is that everyone plays a part. If they access the company’s network, they’re part of the bigger security picture. Therefore, you must teach each the importance of cybersecurity to each member and team, why it’s important, and what they can do to maintain safer practices. For example, a healthy start is guiding staff towards following proper cybersecurity policies, such as utilizing passphrases or following MFA rules.

Accessible Cybersecurity Policy

When developing a cybersecurity policy, it needs two key ingredients: first, that it’s fool-proof and covers every relevant threat, data policy, and regulation. Second, it’s accessible. Technical jargon, especially IT terminology, is vast and often overwhelming. You should focus on key areas for the best outcome, too: how do you respond to disaster scenarios? What’s your password management policy? How do you manage remote work security? Those are the kinds of questions that need accessible answers for a strong cybersecurity policy.

However, a policy is only that: documentation. Any new skillset requires routine practice and fine tuning. Conducting meetings, adjusting weak areas, and consistently updating your awareness training all play a big role in strong, foundational learning.

Raise Threat Awareness

Policies and training are not intended to transform your staff into cybersecurity experts. But that’s not the goal. A realistic outcome is giving them the right knowledge and tools to identify threats and increase awareness of cybersecurity dangers. Including visual cues and simple guides can greatly contribute to awareness. Furthermore, punctuating the consequences of a cybersecurity breach helps connect the “why.” Why improve cybersecurity awareness? Because it puts all data at risk. Not just the company’s information, but staff too.

Evaluate Password Hygiene

There’s a whole thing to be said about passwords and how we approach them. The truth is, complex passwords are a fossil in modern times, often requiring MFA and additional security measures to compensate for their weak foundations. It’s good to evaluate this foundation, however, because it’s one of the basic principles of strong cybersecurity fundamentals. Recent times recommend switching to pass phrases, as they’re effective, easier to remember, and better equipped to repel advanced hacker tools.

Even “complex passwords are reused across logins, apps, and software, outside of the network. So, that means, if a third-party domain is breached containing a staff member’s reused password, that scenario indirectly puts your company in danger. Given that staff are likely to seek easy workarounds for password polices, we recommend switching to passphrases.

Deploy Backups

Never forget the power of a backup. Data travels far and fast, across numerous devices, in different remote locations. That’s why companies implement backup recovery policies (and if not, you should start). It’s also why staff members also need to utilize back ups as well. Modern providers typically offer cloud syncing across different devices in case of damage, loss, or theft. Furthermore, physical peripherals like external SSDs or hard drives are a must when protecting information.

Familiarize Email Security

Email remains a potential vector for security. Once again, we have to point out the dangers of phishing and social engineering schemes. Hackers rely on phishing because it can outmaneuver even the toughest cybersecurity measures by simply acquiring administer logins and network access credentials.

Staff members must remain aware of phishing and its inherent dangers. Educating them on various phishing techniques, such as suspicious links, messages from “trusted” individuals, and even phishing websites all play a vital role in outflanking a dangerous hacking technique. Malicious third parties have access to a plethora of AI generative tools to help them, so if your company isn’t aware of phishing dangers, now’s the time to get them familiarized. Additionally, deploying encryption methods to further protect your data can help aid against the dangers of phishing.

Verified Software

Ever heard of Shadow IT? It’s a complication when users – typically in conjunction with a “bring your own device” policy – utilize software, apps, and programs that are not approved for the enterprise network. When this happens, unmanaged third-party applications “integrate” with business operations, creating a vacuum of security risks. Software that’s properly onboarded to a network is verified and managed to ensure its safety and reliability (or it should be).

Enforcing a policy of prohibited apps is necessary. It’s important to explain why the inclusion of third-party apps when using enterprise services creates risk to both user and the business. Balancing these two stances is crucial, as employees look for the familiar, easy, and simple workarounds.

Update, Train, then Update Again

Even after you’ve established a crash course to improve cybersecurity awareness and training, the journey is far from over. Threat factors continually evolve on a weekly, if not daily basis. The tools we use consistently improve our ability to protect information, but so do the resources available to threat actors.

So, what does that mean? Once you’ve trained staff, you update policies. Then you keep updating! Because the fight for better cybersecurity doesn’t end. That doesn’t mean you need to start from scratch every time, but it does mean normalizing awareness and strong staff education and training.

Like strengthening a muscle, it needs a workout to remain strong and consistent.

Getting Help When You Need It

Establishing an education and training program for cybersecurity is, obviously, easier said than done. And, even with the best intentions, it’s understandable if your enterprise struggles to develop a comprehensive, digestible set of foundational rules.

That’s why reaching out for help is essential. For more information, you can contact Bytagig today.