While your business might have the latest technology to safeguard its private information, the reality is that your employees may be the weakest link in your organisation when it comes to cybersecurity. In fact, human error is still widely considered the number one cause of cybersecurity breaches.
So, what can you do to ensure your employees don’t make mistakes? The most straightforward approach is a detailed cybersecurity training course that educates employees on spotting common threats.
Here, we highlight some of the best places to start when teaching your employees about how they can avoid becoming a victim of a cyber-attack.
How Do I Train My Employees About Cybersecurity?
1. Teach the importance of strong passwords
Although your employees might think their password is enough to keep out a hacker, many passwords are easy to breach for someone with a little bit of know-how. With many people repeating passwords across numerous systems, once a malicious actor has discovered the answer, they can feasibly gain access to a wealth of sensitive information.
Teach your team about using different passwords for each account, plus that a short but unique phrase can provide far greater protection than single words from the dictionary. Meanwhile, implementing two-step verification for all employees might save your business from a cybersecurity crisis.
2. Educate employees on phishing scams
Phishing attacks remain one of the biggest cybersecurity threats to businesses, disrupting everyday processes and requiring an expert cybersecurity incident response team to react promptly. As deceptive emails, texts and instant messages attempt to get unwitting employees to share their private login credentials, these attacks are increasingly sophisticated. In fact, a team member might not even realise they’ve fallen victim until the data breach has been discovered.
To ensure your network security is safeguarded against phishing attacks, your cyber risk management strategy must educate employees on identifying these threats. For example, the sender’s domain address might be a carefully disguised misspelling, or the email could include suspicious attachments that were not ever requested.
3. Highlight vulnerabilities in mobile devices
Some employees might be under the impression that their mobile devices won’t be targeted in a cyber-attack. But as hackers have learned, many employees have just as much sensitive business information on their phones as their work computers, ensuring smartphones and tablets are now at significant risk of being the source of a data breach.
Numerous vulnerabilities exist, but some of the most deceptive include malicious apps that install malware to steal information. Make sure your employees always keep their devices updated with the latest security patches, while they should never download apps from unreliable sources.
4. Implement backup protocols
A data breach or ransomware attack has serious financial and reputational consequences for your business. These events lead companies to either lose their sensitive information or be locked out for an unknown length of time. As this may contribute to extensive downtime, serving your clients can become almost impossible.
However, teaching your employees about the importance of backing up information can save your business from even more pain. With robust protocols ensuring you restore lost data and get operations back up to speed, educating your employees on the importance of regular backups is critical to your cybersecurity standards.
5. Create rigorous reporting methods
Alongside cybersecurity training and certification, your business must educate employees on reporting potential threats to your network. However, this means having the proper procedures in place to ensure potential threats are dealt with logically and effectively.
For example, an employee might notice a phishing email before becoming a victim. But without adequate procedures in place, they might not know who to report this information to, potentially leaving other employees vulnerable to an attack. Clear policies will help protect your organisation.
Keep Your Company Data Secure With Us
Ensuring the security of your company is the most important thing that you can do as a business owner or manager. Often, it seems like such an overwhelming task - after all, cybersecurity is such a broad and complicated topic.
A great place to start is to get your employees actively involved in the process. Alongside leading cybersecurity organisations like LRQA to host tailored cybersecurity training courses for your employees, you can stop data breaches from impacting your business. You can rely on our team of cybersecurity professionals to keep your employees informed of the best practices. Get in touch to find out more information.