With cybercriminals getting sophisticated and savvier in their attacks, businesses with limited to no cybersecurity awareness among employees are the most at risk. Even the best security controls can't protect your organization if your users are not cyber-aware and know nothing about defending against cyberattacks that target employees, such as social engineering attacks.
Cybercriminals find new ways to bypass the latest security controls, landing directly in the browsers and inboxes of your employees. In 2021, 82% of the data breaches involved the human element, with 94% of malware delivered via email. As humans, we all make mistakes. However, failure to account for insider threats can lead to costly security incidents in your organization, hence making cybersecurity awareness training vital for each employee.
This article highlights why employees need cybersecurity awareness training and how you can implement a robust awareness training program in your organization.
Importance of Cybersecurity Awareness Training
A Forbes Survey of over 200 CISOs found that talent and training constraints significantly impact security organizations. Moreover, the survey findings revealed that organizations with siloed approaches to security awareness have a more significant negative impact than those with a robust, enterprise-wide strategic approach.
This can be daunting for any organization, let alone a small business. The reality is that the cost of not training your employees is too high to be ignored. According to Statista, the average cost of a data breach is $9.44 million in the US. You can significantly reduce the chances of a security incident or data breach by training your workforce to identify such attacks.
Cybersecurity awareness training is necessary for employees for several reasons. Some of them include the following.
Prevent Data Breaches & Phishing Attacks
One of the biggest reasons for security awareness training is to prevent data breaches and phishing attacks. In 2021, the most common type of cybercrime was phishing and similar fraud, which affected almost 324k individuals. Moreover, phishing attacks most commonly target employees, as they easily fall prey to such attacks.
Cybersecurity awareness training is vital for employees to identify phishing scams and protect organizations from potential loss.
Save Time & Money
Data breach costs are too high to ignore. Security budgets generally focus on technology, including AI and software. But unaware employees are a liability in the organization that can significantly impact cybersecurity budgeting.
When employees are well aware of their roles and responsibilities, they can trace potential threats and report any expected incidents. Sufficient cyber awareness can prevent operational disruptions in the organization as well as detect threats before they cause any financial damage.
Build a Security Culture
Establishing a security culture is essential for a business to continue its operations securely. But changing people's attitudes from resentment to cooperation, understanding, and compliance is not easy.
Cybersecurity awareness training helps build a security culture in your organization by letting users know the real-world impacts of cyber risks. Advanced training platforms like Novesh Cybersecurity Awareness Program can help monitor and develop a security culture, enabling people to act as the first line of defense against social engineering attacks.
For Compliance
Many regulations, including but not limited to GDPR and HIPAA, implement data privacy rules on organizations to protect customer data. Organizations failing to safeguard user data have to face severe legal penalties in the form of heavy fines. Well-aware employees ensure the protection of sensitive customer data and secure organizations from falling into legal penalties and hefty fines.
Build Customer Trust
Business reputation goes hand-in-hand with customer trust. Customers will start losing their trust in a business affected by a data breach more often. According to a Ponemon Study, 31% of consumers discontinued their relationships with the breached entity following a data breach. In comparison, 65% lost trust in the organization after being affected by one or more breaches. Therefore, cybersecurity awareness is vital to enhance brand reputation and building customer trust.
What are the Best Practices for a Successful Security Awareness Training Program?
The main goal of implementing a cybersecurity awareness program is not only to meet compliance requirements but also to prevent the loss of sensitive customer data. Here are five tips to put an effective awareness program into place.
- Evaluate Your Threat Landscape: The first step towards developing a security awareness program is evaluating critical assets. You can use assessments, including security questionnaires or phishing tests, to identify problem areas.
- Train Employees to Identify a Phish: With the growing effects of phishing attacks, it is essential to train employees to identify them. For this, you can use automated solutions or phishing simulators to help pinpoint weak points in the organization.
- Treat Training as a Continuous Process: Training is not a one-time process. With cyberattacks getting more advanced and sophisticated, training must be treated as a continuous process. To train staff, you can set up a curriculum covering security threats and the latest trends.
- Ensure Compliance with Regulations: While setting up an awareness training program, ensure compliance with regulations. They can help establish best practices and processes required by state and federal regulations.
- Use Data to Measure Effectiveness: Measuring the training and awareness effectiveness is essential to assess the impact of training on employees. One approach is having a count of security incidents that occurred in your organization before implementing formal training programs and then quarterly afterward.
Implementing Robust Cybersecurity Awareness Training
Cybersecurity awareness training is one of the most effective approaches against the increasingly growing cyberattacks. However, manual practices are insufficient to help employees avoid being the weakest link. Automated Solutions like Novesh Cybersecurity Awareness Program can help your organization train employees to recognize potential threats and make the right decisions.
Our experts work with your organization to provide cybersecurity risk assessments, threat monitoring, prevention, and security awareness training. We have partnered with Fortinet to provide the best-automated cybersecurity awareness training to employees lurking as a weak link in your organization.
Take full advantage of our automated program to help your staff identify day-to-day threats occurring in the IT and OT workplaces. Ready to provide your team with advanced automated cybersecurity awareness training? Send us a request to enroll in our security awareness training program.