Have you been postponing financing security awareness training? Well, picture this. You have worked for endless days and nights to grow your business. You have sacrificed precious family time and put in abnormally long-hours for the past five years to realize your entrepreneurial dream. Blood, sweat, and tears are not enough words to describe the challenges, hardships, tribulations, and heartaches that you have endured to be the employer and business owner you are.
Imagine waking up one morning to reports that your successful business is under a cyber-attack. The hackers are demanding crazy high ransoms and are threatening to misuse your client’s information.
Well, this may be a hypothetical scenario, but thousands of companies have lost valuable clients and suffered huge monetary losses from cyber-attacks. Since the threat of malicious cyber-attacks is unlikely to slow down soon, the importance of security awareness training cannot be overemphasized.
Why is Security Awareness Training Essential?
Improve your Company’s Cyber Security
Security awareness training is fundamental to reducing the possible occurrence of a data breach. Going by current reports and events, one may argue that cyber-attacks on businesses is no longer a matter of if but when.
Reports indicate that a cyber-attack occurs every 39 seconds, and the threat is only likely to escalate in the future. By providing employees with security awareness training, you improve your company’s security, subsequently reducing the occurrence of financial losses, loss of client confidence, inconveniences, among other issues.
Through security training, employees know how to recognize a potential vulnerability, learn how to identify suspicious activity, and are equipped with knowledge on how to avoid such security threats.
Security Awareness Training Enhances Adherence to Set Data Rules
Training also ensures that a business remains compliant with set regulations such as the Notifiable Data Breaches, HIPAA regulations, and PSI-DSS, among others. Employees get to know what each regulation stipulates, as well as how they can adhere to each. In case of a breach, the company will suffer reduced legal ramifications if it can prove that it upheld all data protection regulations as required.
Employees need to understand the consequences of cyber attacks
Security awareness training provides an opportunity for employees to comprehend the consequences of cyber attacks. They also get to understand what they can do to protect themselves and the organization from common threats. When employees are fully aware of the importance of security awareness and the consequences of cyber attacks, they will be keen to protect the organization from possible cyber-attacks. Security awareness training will, therefore, ensure that employees won’t fall for phishing campaigns or any other vulnerability exploit out there.
What Common Threats Can Be Avoided Through Security Awareness Training?
Phishing
Phishing is one of the most common forms of cyber-attacks that businesses need to look out for. Here, attackers seek to gain sensitive or valuable client or employee information by posing as trustworthy people.
For example, a while ago, Scotty’s Brewhouse employees’ were victims of a phishing attack when an imposter posed as the company CEO and accessed valuable client information. Through security awareness training, employees learn how to identify fake emails and add extra safeguards to protect themselves from becoming phishing victims. Frequent security awareness training, will remind employees to always be suspicious of unexpected requests and emails, how to use and update anti-malware, and how to configure their spam filters.
Hacking
A well-designed security awareness training is fundamental to understanding hacking and the possible threats associated with it. A hacker takes control of a company’s IT system in an effort to access clients’ credit card databases, personal information, or even a company’s intellectual property.
Employees must learn how to use network firewalls to protect the company against hacking. One specific way employees can protect their devices is via a VPN. A VPN provides a secure infrastructure for users to connect safely.
Every employer should invest in security awareness training because statistics show that not only are such attacks rising but also because it has been proven that about 95% of cybersecurity breaches occur due to human errors.
Ransomware
In ransomware attacks, malicious software is used to encrypt a company’s data. The attackers asks for a ransom to release the decryption key.
Employees learn how to use effective anti-virus, back up data, and keep software packages updated. Employees will also learn how to identify and remain wary of unsolicited and fishy emails, apps, and browser extensions. Taking proactive measures against ransomware adds an important dynamic layer to your security strategy.
