Understanding the Importance of Cybersecurity Awareness Training

Taylor Karl
/ Categories: Resources, CyberSecurity
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The Vital Importance of Cybersecurity Awareness Training in the Digital Age

When a company falls victim to a malicious cybersecurity attack, there is far more on the line than the subsequent PR nightmare. Yes, a security breach can damage your organization's reputation and trust, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Identity theft, financial fraud, and disruptions to your business can all occur due to an attack on your company. The truth about cybersecurity in 2023 is that it is about far more than firewalls and endpoint protection. Security is everyone's responsibility, not just IT. If you need proof, consider that this year, 74% of data breaches were caused by human error.

Security experts know your company is only as safe as its least informed employee. However, shockingly, many organizations don't require their staff to complete cybersecurity awareness training. 

On this page:

What is Cybersecurity Awareness Training?

Like any other type of corporate training, security awareness is about education and giving your employees new skills. It helps your people understand, identify, and avoid cyber threats, which, in turn, helps prevent or mitigate harm to organizations and stakeholders. Cybersecurity awareness is about creating a knowledgeable workforce where each teammate understands their role in maintaining cybersecurity by recognizing and preventing potential breaches.

More companies are undergoing digital transformation and embracing remote work to create a more flexible environment for their employees. As they do, the IT infrastructure grows ever more complicated and vulnerable as a result. A good corporate training program will offer modules on all the most important cybersecurity threats and best practices for responding to them.

Here are the essential topics to include in your organization's training efforts:

Phishing: This attack involves using fraudulent emails or messages to trick recipients into revealing sensitive information, such as login credentials or financial data. Phishing is responsible for one in three successful data breaches and often precedes large-scale exposure. If an attacker obtains an employee's access credentials, they can gain entry to broader systems or networks, compromising a larger pool of sensitive data. 

Email Security: Just one deceptive email is all it takes to breach your company's defenses. Training employees to identify and respond appropriately to suspicious emails is step one to building your human firewall. 

Password Security: Weak passwords are among the most common ways malicious actors infiltrate your network. Cybersecurity training should always teach employees how to create strong passwords and manage them effectively. Safe passwords should have at least eight characters and include a mix of letters, numbers, and special symbols.

Safe Internet Browsing: We all invariably find ourselves surging the web at some point during the day, which is why you need to teach your team how to do it safely. It may seem like second nature, but all kinds of threats are hiding on the Internet that even seasoned pros can miss. Make sure your team knows to update their browsers regularly and can recognize secure websites and risky online behaviors.

Mobile Device Security: Mobile devices often contain sensitive information, including personal data, corporate emails, and business documents, which means a robust training program must include best practices for securing them.

Network Security: Nearly a third of workers in the U.S. work remotely, at least part-time, commonly using less secure home networks or public Wi-Fi. The safe use of public networks, secure authentication methods, and remote access to the company's Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are all helpful topics to include. 

Data Protection: What data is most important? How should your company guard the vast amount of sensitive and private information it collects from customers, employees, and research and development? A good cybersecurity training program should teach employees to safely handle this sensitive information.

Privacy Laws: With more data privacy laws passing in jurisdictions across the globe, every employee is responsible for adhering to these regulations. 

Malware and Ransomware Awareness: Most businesses experienced ransomware and malware attacks in 2023, which are malicious software programs that allow criminals to steal sensitive data from individuals and organizations.

The Purpose of Cybersecurity Awareness Training

Cybersecurity awareness training equips your staff with the knowledge and skills to identify and respond to threats online, reducing the risk of a successful attack. Training creates a culture that values and practices security within the organization where every employee understands their role in your company’s security posture.

We should also note that tailoring your cybersecurity training to different roles is crucial because each department faces unique risks. For instance, the finance department should receive training focused on financial fraud and invoice scams, while the IT department might need more in-depth training on network security and intrusion detection. Customizing the training ensures that each employee gets the relevant information and skills for their roles and responsibilities.

Benefits of Cybersecurity Awareness Training

The average cost of a data breach in 2022 was a historic high of approximately $4.35 million. Look no further than this eye-popping stat to understand why introducing cybersecurity training to your organization is so important. Anything you can do to bring that number down and mitigate the financial blows that typically accompany a successful cyber attack is worthwhile. 

The benefits are multifaceted:

  • Empowering Employees: Well-informed employees are less vulnerable and less likely to fall prey to attacks. One of the major benefits of security training is that it enhances the first line of defense and lowers the risk of data breaches and cyberattacks significantly.
  • Risk Mitigation: Risk mitigation involves creating security policies and processes to reduce the overall risk or impact of a cybersecurity threat. Unless you include employee learning and development modules on risk prevention, detection, and remediation, your security policies will never be successful. 
  • Compliance and Legal Implications: Meeting regulatory requirements and ensuring compliance with various data protection and privacy laws reduces the likelihood of incurring penalties, as many regulations require staff to be trained in cybersecurity best practices
  • Building a Resilient Organizational Culture: Fostering a culture of vigilance and proactive cybersecurity behavior, empowering employees to take charge of their digital security.

Why Cybersecurity Awareness Training is Important

In today's digital age, cybersecurity training is more crucial than ever. Here are three things that demonstrate the importance of cyber security awareness training:

The Human Factor

Employees are often the weakest line of defense against cyber attacks, so why wouldn’t you want to help them? Without proper training, they can unknowingly make it easy for attackers to infiltrate the organization's network. Training ensures they remain vigilant, recognize potential hazards, and know the appropriate steps to mitigate them.

Adaptation to Evolving Threats: 

As with most things in the digital age, nothing remains the same for long. Rather, the threat landscape is continuously evolving and becoming more sophisticated.

Security Case Studies

Let’s consider some real-world examples of how cybersecurity awareness education can benefit an organization:

Example 1: Spearfishing 

We’ve already covered phishing, the most common type of attack. Spear phishing is the next evolution, where criminals use highly targeted and personalized emails or messages to trick individuals into revealing sensitive information. They will customize the messages to a specific individual or organization to the point where they can include details about the target's role, relationships, work projects, or recent activities. Moreover, the attacker may use email addresses and logos to impersonate a trusted colleague, supervisor, or service provider.

Ideally, your training program would teach employees to use email filtering and to recognize a phishing attempt so they can report the attack and prevent a significant data breach. Encouraging a good, healthy skepticism of unexpected or unusual emails can go a long way toward thwarting spearfishing attempts.

Example 2: Malicious Insiders 

Did you know sometimes employees or contractors will misuse their access and privileges to intentionally harm an organization? These people are known as insider threats and will often try to steal sensitive data, such as customer information, intellectual property, or trade secrets, and sell or use it for personal gain. By conducting regular training sessions, you can enable staff to identify a malicious insider, safeguarding sensitive company information from being stolen. 

Conclusion

More and more companies prioritize training employees in cybersecurity awareness, but there is still a long way to go. Not only are there more attacks than ever, but the tactics of cybercriminals are becoming increasingly advanced. Cybercriminals will relentlessly target your security gaps, such as weak passwords and unsecured networks. So, consider this a call to action for all organizations: It's time to prioritize and invest in cybersecurity awareness training to educate employees about risks and best practices to mitigate them.

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