Cybersecurity is becoming a real issue in the world of business, to the point where it can significantly damage your company’s finances and reputation if private information is hacked. There is a simple answer to the question, ‘why should employees be trained in cybersecurity?’ Quite simply, if they don’t know how to identify a threat, how can they sidestep it and understand what to keep in mind for next time?
According to a study, 90% of security violations are of human fault, and on most occasions, employees are the key targets.Hackers have the ambition of tricking the individual to take a certain action, such as opening a file or clicking on a link which permits the virus to spread onto the system.
With this in mind, employees need to be well-equipped with relevant information to protect the company against the most harmful cyber-attacks. If you’re considering investing in cybersecurity training for your employees, here are the main pointers they need to be aware of:
1. Using Password Security
Nowadays, it’s a vital step to implement password security on devices that contain sensitive data. This ensures that only employees have access to devices with a personal password, so external parties are unable to log on and retrieve the data. While employees may be quick to use generic,easy-to-remember passwords for convenience, this ultimately makes passwords much simpler to crack by potential hackers. Cybersecurity training informs employees about how to create a strong password with a mixture of letters, symbols, and numbers to limit the risk of sensitive information being criminally retrieved.
2. How to Identify Security Threats
Your employees are ultimately those that will be exposed to security threats daily, so they must be aware of what to look out for.While it may be less costly to conduct training yourself, do you have in-depth knowledge of what you’re discussing so employees have an all-round understanding of what to avoid?
Investing in a professional training program such as “fraudwatchinternational.com/security-awareness/what-is-cyber-security-awareness-training/” by FraudWatch International, for example, will educate your employees about the most common online threats and how to report these red flags through studying relevant case studies and simulations.
3. Awareness of Data Breaches
Your employees should understandhow to keep your business data safe from external parties. Almost all data breaches are caused by employees, and for the most part,is completely unintentional. In the most severe cases, a breach could cost the business thousands of dollars.
This situation usually occurs when employees haven’t been made aware of the policies when first starting work at the company, and it means they have no prior knowledge to refer to when it comes to keeping data safe. Your employees must be aware of how data breaches are caused and how they can be prevented.All employees should be informed of the following aspects to prevent data breaches happening in your workplace:
- Single sign-on
- How firewalls work
- Avoiding data leakage
- The difference between genuine and spam mail
