Human error has been and continues to be the most common cause of data breaches. Even if your business has all the most sophisticated security tools, a single careless click or weak password can cause significant and perhaps even irreversible damage to your operations.
One of the best cybersecurity investments you can make is security awareness training for your workforce. Teaching your employees to spot, prevent, and report threats and suspicious activity can translate to outsized benefits for the time and money you put into it.
What topics should a successful cybersecurity training program include?
Cybersecurity awareness training isn’t solely about spotting suspicious emails. There’s a broad array of topics you should cover to ensure your risk is minimized:
- Phishing: Emails are the most common entry points for phishing attacks, but your training must also include phishing scams over SMS and phone calls.
- Remote/Hybrid work: Remote work, while good for flexibility, has its unique risks. To ensure these risks are mitigated, cover personal device and public internet access security best practices in your training.
- Safe browsing: Go over not only which sites to avoid but also the tools and browser extensions that can help prevent accidental access to malicious sites.
- Mobile device security: Even if they don’t regularly work remotely, any employee who accesses your network from a mobile device needs to know the risks and best practices.
- Password management: Go into detail about strong password policies, or better yet how to best utilize password management software.
- Reporting processes: Continuously strengthening your cybersecurity posture requires information on the threats your network faces, which relies on your workforce properly reporting attacks and suspicious activity.
Best practices for cybersecurity awareness training
Make your training more engaging and effective with these helpful tips.
Tailor your cybersecurity training
Every learner is different, and there’s no one-size-fits-all training. For best results, alter the training curriculum based on role. For example, your marketing team and accounting team interact with your IT in different ways, so their training should be focused on what is relevant to them.
Utilize simulations and hands-on exercises
Simply giving a lecture is not going to yield the best results. Set up simulated attacks and hands-on training so that your employees can get a real-world feeling of what an attack is like. This ensures that when a real one comes, they are ready.
Make training both regular and mandatory
Unfortunately, cybersecurity awareness is not like riding a bike. It’s not something you learn and be good at forever. Your employees need to be kept up to date on the latest trends and attacks so they aren’t blindsided by something they don’t recognize.
This means holding regular trainings that are mandatory. Your company’s survival and your employees’ jobs rely on preventing data breaches, so these trainings cannot be optional.
Measure impact and collect data to refine your program
Check your security metrics and ask for stakeholder feedback after each training session. All of this information will help you improve the impact of your training and the adoption rate of cybersecurity best practices.
Get leadership involved
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that you, as a business leader, do not need to attend this training for whatever reason. You are perhaps the most valuable target for cybercriminals, so you must know how to protect your business’s network and data.
Showing up and getting involved also shows your workforce how important this program is, improving engagement and impact.
Maximize the effectiveness of your cybersecurity training with professional expertise
If your organization lacks the knowledge and experience to continually develop an up-to-date cybersecurity training regimen, you’re not alone. The more sophisticated that cyberattacks get, the more specialized expertise is required to defend against them.
While we at outsourceIT focus on providing expert IT services and support, we understand the importance of awareness training. We can work with you to ensure your training program aligns with your overall IT infrastructure and security measures. Our team can help you implement best practices, manage your systems securely, and respond effectively to potential threats.
Contact us to explore how we can partner to build a stronger security foundation for your business.
