The Importance of Cybersecurity Awareness for Employees

April 18, 2022

It’s become a necessity to enforce cybersecurity awareness with employees at all levels and in all departments. It all starts with the right training program for every employee in order to secure your IP and company data. Enforcing a cybersecurity awareness training program is a necessary step to securing your IP and company data. And today, it is everyone’s responsibility to care about cybersecurity.

From the owner of your facility to the individuals working at your front desk, everyone at your business handles company data and they should all be required to attend cybersecurity training in order to better understand their responsibility to recognize the signs of a security breach.

The Makings of a Successful Cybersecurity Awareness Program
The requirement for data security, IP protection, and privacy policies should align with a training program that showcases each role's importance in preventing cyberattacks.

Educating employees on common threats is imperative in order to successfully fight against malicious intent. Additionally, a comprehensive cybersecurity awareness training program not only lowers risks of security threats... it frees up the IT department’s time by avoiding cybersecurity breaches. 

When contemplating a cybersecurity awareness training program, you may consider your industry and company size for start. Next, consider the following topics in your cyber resilience training program:

1. Passwords, Access Privileges, and Secure Network Connections
Ensure a portion of your cybersecurity awareness curriculum trains employees on basics regarding passwords, access privileges, and the need for secure network connections. Several employees do not understand the implications of an insecure network connection and weak passwords.

Integrate these topics into your training to help:

• Email and password security best practices
• Why weak passwords are high risk
• Job role access privileges
   

2. Social Engineering and Phishing
Phishing and social engineering try to steal sensitive information via email, chat, fake websites, or other means. They’re generally successful due to their disguise as coming from a trustworthy source. Users can easily be tricked into providing access to passwords, credit card details, data, or other divulging information.

Integrate these topics into your training to help:

• Identifying and countering phishing scams
• Spotting fake or suspicious web pages and software
• Recognizing social engineering
• Social engineering risks
   

3. Security for Devices
More employees now use their own mobile devices or computers; after all, we are in the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) era. As a result, there are more entry points for threats when using these devices to connect to company networks and when accessing corporate data. For this, they must understand mobile device protection and security best practices.

It doesn’t end there, as digital threats are not the only risks your employees need to worry about. Physical security plays an extremely important role as well; such as, leaving a computer or mobile device logged in unattended. These are common mistakes that put sensitive information at risk.

Integrate these topics into your training to help:

• Mobile and computer device security
• Proper and safe use of mobile devices
• Insecure personal device risks
• Physical device security guidelines
• Best practices for storing and properly disposing of paper documents
• Risks of unattended devices and sensitive documents
   

4. Cybersecurity Threat Reaction
Awareness of a security breach is essential to preventing issues; however, how you react to a cybersecurity threat is just as important. You can put a simple threat reaction plan in place that can be acted upon immediately; keeping you ahead of the game.

Integrate these topics into your training to help:

• Assemble a threat reaction team
• Determine the source
• Contain the damage
• Assess the severity
• Notify those affected