Security Awareness Training is Your Best Defense

Cybersecurity is a subject that you and every member of your organization should be taking seriously. It’s more important than ever when you have remote employees working outside of the office.

By implementing a formal security awareness training program, you can ensure that every employee learns how to keep your network secure. And on the opposite side of the coin, providing formal training gives you a valid reason to put more security measures into place if an employee violates your security policy down the road.

How to Implement a Training Program

Security awareness training can reduce the impact of a cyberattack by more than 70%. When planning the logistics of your program, start by getting buy-in from your executive leadership team. Explain that protecting your customers, their data, and any private company information is far less expensive than repairing the damage you’ll be left with after a cyberattack.

Secondly, you should evaluate your security weak spots. For instance, are your emails actually private? Who has access to your payment system? If you use a file-sharing software, how secure are your logins?

Realize that cyberattackers will continue to try everything they can to outsmart the common man or woman. Your employees may think they know how to detect a scam or a phishing email, but do they really? You should include examples and test employees on how to identify email and phone phishing scams to help avoid vulnerabilities in the future.

Passwords are in a category of their own. Within your training plan, you should standardize a company-wide process wherein all employees must follow a set of guidelines when choosing a secure password. Everyone should also be required to change their password on a regular basis.

To learn more about why you should implement a security awareness training program and how to do it, contact our team of experts at MidnightBlue.