In today’s world, cyberthreats are not designed to let up on the gas when orchestrating attacks. Instead, they’re designed to continually adapt to the end user’s weaknesses.
What can we do about this? Well, this means that we must educate ourselves and our employees on the cyberthreats that surround us, both personally and professionally. This where we can use Security Awareness Training (SAT) not only for your benefit, but also for your business’s advantage.
What is Security Awareness Training (SAT)?
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.
How Should I Get 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 just reuse the same content for this training. Getting creative with what you use will help keep employees on their toes, as well as prtovide 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.
Use email filtering as a tool in your arsenal: Email filtering is an added layer of protection for your employees and business. It works by filtering incoming emails addressed to users by scanning the messages addressed to users and classifying them into categories such as, spam, virus, imposter, adult, and more. It keeps these bad emails at bay from the end user, and at the end of the day they are more protected from cyberthreats.
Ultimately, security is a people problem. Education and training are the paths toward improvement.
If you have any additional questions or concerns, please call 502-240-0404 or send us an email at info@mirazon.com