3 Big Benefits of Cybersecurity Awareness Training For Your Employees
If you run a business, you must invest in cybersecurity awareness training for your employees. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a big or small business, or whether you started up last week or have been open for years. Whatever your situation, you need a budget for cybersecurity awareness training.
Why are we so insistent? Great question! Let’s dive in.
What is cybersecurity awareness training?
Cybersecurity awareness training ensures everyone in your organization is prepared to help protect your business from cyber criminals.
To do this, you need to educate your employees. Develop a program that addresses the risk of cyber threats and mitigation tactics. Your program can consist of videos, workshops, and simulations. Don’t be afraid to get crafty and use outside-the-box thinking.
You also need to make your cybersecurity awareness training exciting and engaging. If it’s boring, your employees will tune it out. This will waste time and money and definitely NOT protect your business.
One thing you don’t need to do is build an in-house cyber education team. Most small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) will see the best results and ROI by outsourcing this training.
Just make sure the training is continuous. This is not a set-it-and-forget-it thing. If it’s a one-time event, your employees will likely forget the importance. And if you don’t keep up with cyber innovations, your employees may get outdated advice.
Why is cybersecurity awareness training important?
Cyber attacks often succeed because of human error. Someone clicks a malicious link, uses a weak password, fails to update their software — and the whole company is suddenly compromised.
Awareness training helps employees learn good habits to prevent these mistakes. Everyone in your organization needs to stay sharp to handle the professional tactics of today’s cyber criminals.
Unfortunately, an attack on your systems is a matter of when not if. When that phishing email finally sneaks through, are your employees prepared to delete it, mark it as spam, or report it to IT?
If yes, you’re in a great position to thwart the attack and carry on.
If not, you’re about to be in serious trouble. But if you need a quick refresher on how to spot phishing emails, we have you covered!
Cyber training is the last line of defense
Cybersecurity awareness training is like the last line of defense. When a professional criminal cuts through all your layers of defense, the difference between bankruptcy and business as usual is how well your employees are trained.
On that note, do you know what cybersecurity awareness training is also about? Trust. It’s about everyone associated with your company — from employees to customers — trusting that you have a safe and healthy business environment. Training is a huge part of establishing that trust, but it’s often taken for granted.
Imagine going to a doctor who never went to medical school. Or handing your money to a financial advisor with no certifications. It sounds absurd because it is. Who wants to put their health and finances in the hands of untrained people?
Now think about your customers. When they buy your products and services, they trust that their credit card information and personal data will be safe.
Would they feel that way if they discovered you never trained your employees on cybersecurity?
As a business owner, you control how your employees are trained. How would you feel if you suffered a breach because your untrained employees let in a scammer?
3 ways cybersecurity awareness training for employees will benefit your business
We get it — budgets are tight, and it’s tough to immediately justify an expense that doesn’t affect your bottom line. Cyber is always affecting your bottom line, even if it can’t be neatly tracked in a weekly report or daily dashboard.
As a business owner, you want to connect those dots. Once you do, you’ll see how the benefits of cybersecurity awareness training are actually massive.
Increase employee understanding of cyber risks
Today’s cyber criminals run businesses. They use innovative tactics meant to maximize their revenue. Twenty years ago, it wasn’t like that. But over the past ten years, cyber crime costs have skyrocketed. And they’re showing no signs of slowing down. Unfortunately, cyber crime pays well.
Do your employees understand this? Are they aware that one innocent mistake can also bankrupt the business — costing them their jobs? Are your employees — or you — stuck in the mindset that cyber crime “happens to someone else”? Do you know that ransomware attacks are happening around the globe every minute?
Reduce the chance of a data breach
A good cyber program helps employees connect the dots between the threat landscape and preventative measures. It offers clear instructions on how to limit the likelihood of breaches and reveals easy ways to practice cyber hygiene. It shows employees the basics of how your company stores data and how simple everyday actions protect it.
Good cyber training builds a shared sense of security. It arms everyone with the knowledge to prevent a data breach. It also pays off — a Ponemon study revealed that cybersecurity awareness could help reduce the cost of phishing attacks by more than 50%.
Save money
As usual, it all comes down to money. Because that’s what cyber criminals want, whether they hack into your systems and re-route a big payment slated to your contractor — or pretend to be your contractor — whether they steal your bank account credentials to reset your password or steal your business data so they can sell it back to you — they’re after your money.
Suppose your employees know how to spot a fraud scheme or a malicious attempt to trick them into giving them access to your network. In that case, you’re in the best possible position. One putting you ahead of the bad actor. You will never suffer a breach (or, in the worst case, you will know how to mitigate the effects of one quickly), and you’ll never lose this money.
According to IBM, the average cost of a data breach in the US is now $9.44 million, more than double than in the rest of the world. Wouldn't you rather save that $9.44 million for something kewl, like Taylor Swift tickets for your whole company … in every city? Or maybe something more practical, whateves.
3 critical cybersecurity awareness training topics for employees
The world moves fast, and time is tight — we get it! If you had to conduct only three cybersecurity training sessions for your employees, we would suggest these topics: phishing, password security, and system configuration.
Phishing scams
Phishing scams are when cyber criminals try to bait people in an organization to click on a malicious link. The most common type of phishing is through email, though phishing methods have evolved to using text messages and phone calls.
To keep up with the different phishing scams, your employees need regular awareness training sessions. Arguably, the easiest way to stop a phishing scam is to know how to spot it. The bait is often an exciting but awkward and unexpected message. If employees are trained to expect these messages and take action on them, they’ll never fall for the scam.
Password security
If you practice basic password security, it will sound ridiculous to learn that high-profile breaches have occurred from easily guessed passwords, like the user’s name or “12345”.
But remember, cybersecurity training isn’t for you — it’s for your employee who’s been using the same password for a decade just because it’s easy to remember and they’ve never had a problem.
Proper system configuration
This one is for your IT and cyber pros who do things like install cybersecurity systems. When doing so, ensure your teams work closely with vendors, especially with new systems. Why? Because configuring new software can be complicated.
The fact is, everyone makes mistakes, even experts. In one cybersecurity study, 80% of external penetration tests encountered a misconfiguration that bad actors could exploit. If your teams are trained and prepared, you’ll be more likely to have the proper processes to ensure your awesome new security system is actually secure.
Best Practice - Cybersecurity awareness training should be a positive experience
One last thing, and this is more of a best practice! OK, you just put your employees through a six-month cybersecurity awareness training program. You run a test phishing email — and half your employees fall for it.
Should you fire them? Absolutely… NOT!
Reward employees for getting better. Don’t punish the ones who make a human error in training. One way to ensure the best participation and growth from the program is to make it a positive experience. Cyber involves a lot of fear by nature, so you want to counter that, not reinforce it.
One of the least beneficial things you can do is make training punitive. Employees won’t be inspired to learn from cyber training and protect your company if they’re afraid of the consequences of one innocuous wrong move.
If someone falls for a phishing test, sign them up for additional training. Sure, if an extensively trained employee allows a breach, you’ll need real accountability.
But that’s a different story!
Are you considering developing a cyber awareness training program but want some help? You can use our branded content, or we could write curated white-label content for you. We can help you! Let’s talk.
Magic Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all? They should be the one I share this article with, right? Hello…Magic Mirror…are you there? 🙂
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Cyber 101 | The Solopreneur | SMB | BoD
