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With hackers bombarding your employees with social engineering attacks, it is important for businesses to invest in increasing cybersecurity awareness amongst your employees. Businesses should organize cybersecurity training programs that prepare employees for future threats.
Many businesses already have a cybersecurity training and awareness program and those who don’t have a cybersecurity awareness and training program is planning to start one very soon. Let’s consider that you have a cybersecurity training program but how effective it is? If it is not very effective, then you are at the right place.
In this article, you will learn about seven tried and tested hacks that will enhance the effectiveness of your cybersecurity program.
1. Have a Flexible Corporate Culture
Every company has multiple departments. Not only does company enthusiasm and support for cybersecurity measures varies from company to company but it also differs from department to department. You might find IT department leading the way but another department not so keen on participating in cybersecurity awareness programs.
You will realize that senior IT managers are very enthusiastic about cybersecurity awareness program, but employees are not. Similarly, most employees and members of senior management are quite supportive towards cybersecurity awareness training. You will have to convince them that participating in cybersecurity awareness and training programs is good for the business.
The best way to cope up with that challenge is to develop a flexible corporate culture. Take all the stakeholders onboard, whether they are your employees or senior management and design a cybersecurity program that easily align with your corporate culture.
2. Design Comprehensive Training
When designing a cybersecurity training and awareness program for your organization, it is important to ensure that it covers everything which is relevant to your organization. A cybersecurity training and awareness program should be comprehensive and teach employees how to identify cybersecurity threats. Additionally, it should also help them understand the consequences of cyberattacks.
Most employees lack knowledge, skill and expertise in this regard which is why they can easily fall victim to social engineering attacks. They are not capable to detect cyber security attack that target your network, database and best dedicated server. Your cybersecurity awareness and training program should not only cover common cyberattacks which are popular but also those which are lesser known and less common.
3. Conduct Mock Phishing Exercises Regularly
One of the most common type of social engineering attack that target your business is phishing. Yes, it might common in different shapes and sizes, but you can still train your employees to protect against these threats. The best way to do that is to run phishing simulator. Executing mock phishing attacks and see how your employees react to it. Can they detect it or not? These mock exercises can help you identify loopholes in your cybercity infrastructure, which can easily be exploited by cyber criminals. This will help you to fix all the vulnerabilities in your current cybersecurity defenses and make it hacker proof.
4. Increase the Frequency of Training
The pace at which cybersecurity industry is evolving is mind boggling. Hackers are always looking for new opportunities to break into your systems and fulfill their malicious designs. For this, they will launch more sophisticated and new attacks which you and your employees might not have heard about. That is why it is important to increase the frequency of cybersecurity training. Uou should also read about professional companies like Foresite that provide advanced managed network security service.
Most businesses organize cybersecurity once or twice a year but that is not enough anymore. To keep your employees updated with the latest threat and how to protect against them, it is important for businesses to arrange these trainings every quarter. Use event activated learning to connect training to real life events. When you map training with phishing simulators, you can achieve much better results.
5. Target the Right Groups
The best cybersecurity training programs deliver the right training to the right people at the right time. Design your training in such a way that it focusses on immediate impact and slowly but surely make it an integral part of your daily workflow of your employees. Once you have managed to successfully integrate cybersecurity into the fabric of your company, it can force a behavioral change. That is the ultimate goal you want to achieving with your cybersecurity awareness and training program.
6. Keep an Eye on Behavior Changes
While we are on the topic of behavioral change, it is important to discuss it in detail. Cybersecurity professionals believe that cybersecurity tools are effective when it comes to preventing cybersecurity attacks. They tend to downplay the importance of cybersecurity training and building cybersecurity awareness. There is no denying that cybersecurity tools and software are important, but it should be combined with cybersecurity trainings and awareness programs.
Companies with no cybersecurity training programs in place can become a soft target for hackers as they launch phishing attacks along with other targeted attacks to trick employees. Instead of focusing on compliance, you should focus on bring behavioral changes with your cybersecurity trainings. Focus on metrics like number of employees reported phishing emails and events blocked by endpoint protection to gauge the effectiveness of your cybersecurity measures.
7. Pardon the Sin
Cybersecurity experts raises concerns over ability of employees and higher management to cope up with modern phishing attacks. Due to this, businesses implementing cybersecurity training and awareness programs tend to punish employees who are found guilty of falling into hacker’s trap. This can have a negative impact as it will develop a sense of fear amongst your employees.
Additionally, it will force employees to stay tight lipped about such incidents instead of sharing information with concerned departments. They might even develop a feeling of guilt and shame. All this could have negative connotations for your cybersecurity awareness and training programs. Your motive should be to educate employees about cybersecurity, not to embarrass them.
How do you improve your cybersecurity training and awareness program? Let us know in the comments section below.
