Should My Employees Receive Cybersecurity Training?

Cybersecurity training has quickly become extremely important for businesses. Employees don’t need to be cybersecurity experts, but they should be practicing healthy cyber habits.

New-hire training and regularly scheduled refresher training courses should be established in order to instill the data security culture of your organization. As always, preparedness is the key to preventing most security breaches. It is always best to know how to avoid becoming a victim.

Improper or lack of cybersecurity training can cause many problems for your business. We want you and your employees to be prepared so that you don’t become a statistic! What could happen if proper cybersecurity training isn’t implemented?

Dangers of Not Training

Ransomware will be one of the most common security breaches in 2019. We’ve explained how ransomware — and security breaches like it — can wreak havoc on a business’ infrastructure. Given proper training, these types of attacks are easy to avoid.

Besides the risk of losing valuable information, you may also experience loss of business. Unfortunately, victims of a cybersecurity breach typically suffer financial or reputational damage. Compromised information usually results in customers pulling away from the affected business, and some of those customers may also seek litigation. By contrast, proper cybersecurity training will limit the risk of a breach, thus keeping your customers happy.

What Should I Include in My Cybersecurity Training?

Not all training programs are created equal, but some fundamentals are required to get the biggest bang for your buck! Below, we’ll list a few topics that will help you create a balanced and educational training program.

Phishing – Know how to spot and avoid phishing attacks. Phishing emails can look very convincing, and accidentally giving away personal or business information can compromise your business. Proper training can enable employees to recognize and report these emails.

Website Safety – At work and at home, it is important to know that many websites cannot be blindly trusted. Even websites that look legitimate can be malicious if the address is wrong by one letter. Proper cybersecurity training includes website recognition and browsing safety.

Password Creation – This may be one of the most important lessons in cybersecurity. Employees need to create strong passwords that are easy to remember. A strong password should be a sentence or phrase that is easy to remember. Make sure to include numbers and symbols into your password as well.

In addition to having strong passwords, Two-Factor Authentication will help add another layer of security to your accounts. Two-Factor Authentication (or 2FA) works by requiring users to input another code provided by something the user physically has (such as a smart phone or separate 2FA token). You may find it helpful to inform your employees about Two-Factor Authentication.

How Can I Implement Cybersecurity Training Into My Normal Employee Training?

Cybersecurity training may seem like a daunting task at first. However, by starting early and continuing your training, you’ll find that cyber safety is mainly all about common sense.

Start at hiring! From Day 1, cybersecurity training works best when everyone is on the same page. To accomplish that, you should integrate your cybersecurity training into the usual on-boarding training for new hires. By starting early, you ensure that your employees know how important it is to be safe on the internet.

Offer continuous training. As with everything relating to technology, cybersecurity training evolves quickly. Make sure to stay updated! Threats will come in different forms, and employees should be able to recognize those threats. Employees with good cybersecurity training mitigate the risk to the business.

Conduct evaluations. Make sure your training pays off! If you are partnered with a managed service provider, they can test your employees’ cybersecurity knowledge. A mock phishing attempt will tell you exactly which employee needs improvement.

Stress the importance of security at work and home. In today’s connected world, cyber safety is crucial. Having good cybersecurity training is the same as being a safe driver; you need to know the rules of the road.

Written by:  Matt Schmidt for Business 2 Community.