We’re in week four of our fITness challenge! If you missed last week’s challenge, you can catch up here.
Week 4: Security Awareness Training
As we continue through your IT fitness journey, the next topic we want to cover is Security Awareness Training. Despite the ever-evolving threat of cyberattacks, this type of training continues to be a challenge for management teams and businesses. There are many things that cause this including having the right people trained on the right material, as well as lack of employee engagement. Rest assured, we have some tips for you, but let’s first start by understanding what Security Awareness Training is and why it’s important for your business.
What is Security Awareness Training?
Security Awareness Training (SAT) is used to educate employees on the different types of risks they may become exposed to, how to recognize them, and what to do if they encounter any. It serves the purpose of improving your business’s overall security posture and compliance. This is also a great tool to use for getting employees to understand the role they play in helping to protect from security breaches.
SAT is critically important to your business, but also to your employees and clients. Most importantly, this type of training prevents attacks and breaches on the front line – your employees. It also helps to make your defenses stronger, reinforces the idea of a secure culture, and it also gives your customers more confidence in your business.
Tips for getting started:
Training frequency: Make sure you’re doing this training more than once a year for your employees. It’s important to keep it fresh in their minds to keep them aware of the risks and avoid complacency. SAT is a process, and it should be continually implemented and evaluated as cybersecurity threats are constantly changing.
Get creative with content: In the same way, don’t repeatedly reuse content for this training. Getting creative with what you use will help keep employees on their toes, as well as providing you with insight on what needs improving.
Measure effectiveness: Simply implementing SAT is not enough – you must also ensure that it works. After educating and training your employees it is important that you test their knowledge. Testing your employees on their newly acquired security awareness will give you feedback on how well the training went, if the employees understand what was covered, and if it was effective. Testing can include simulated phishing emails, links, and much more – including reports on how successful employees were in identifying threats. These reports should be used to help you cater the training in areas specific to your business.
Match roles to risks: You want to make sure you’re training employees on the risks that they could potentially be exposed to. Evaluate the threats each department could be vulnerable to – they could be very similar, or they could be drastically different. Whatever the case may be, carefully assess the landscape and implement the proper training to help keep your business, employees, and clients safe and protected.
Ultimately, security is a people problem. Education and training are the paths toward improvement.