With an average of 2,244 cyberattacks occurring every single day, the need for advanced cybersecurity has never been greater. While companies now spend more money on their defense systems than ever before, perhaps the best tactic is to invest money in the staff.
When your employees are not trained on the basics of spotting phishing or spam emails, they can be your Achilles’ heel. This is why sufficiently training them and giving them the tools they need to help protect your business will make them your biggest asset. Here’s how you can cultivate a winning cyberculture throughout your organization.
Train Them
Studies show that over 90% of all data breaches occur due to human errors, and the harsh reality is that your defense systems are only as effective as your least safety-conscious team member. Therefore, ensuring that all employees are supported by the basic grounds for making smart decisions can be a huge step in securing your company’s private information with immediate and lasting results.
Efficient and engaging training keeps employees on top of the latest cyber risks, including phishing, malware, and ransomware. The increased awareness of various threats should be supported by an understanding of how to identify a scam, as well as the right protocols on how to report suspected breaches—especially as over half of are still identified by external sources, such as law enforcement.
Both prevention and mitigation of breach damage are significantly improved when companies identify the issues themselves, whether that be courtesy of in-house staff or managed IT services. In addition to interactive cybersecurity courses for all employees, your teams can visit business security education conferences that delve into specific topics, such as cloud computing or securing internal enterprise applications.
Give Them Accountability
Protecting your business with the right infrastructure of advanced tools and defense systems is one thing, but actively changing the habitual actions of your employees is another together. Work with a Jacksonville IT company to cultivate a culture where staff members actively practice good cyber hygiene, and precautionary behaviors keep systems clean while minimizing potential threats.
Over 4 in 10 cyber attacks target SMEs while the risks affect team members, as well as the company itself. It’s imperative that employees are committed to taking responsibility for their daily actions. Clear policies and codes of practice are crucial tools that should be revisited on a regular basis. Aside from refreshing their minds about the commitments made, it’s a chance to address new threats and scams.
While policies do need to be imposed, true success comes from establishing a sense of accountability from top to bottom. When all employees take personal responsibility, collective security reaches optimal levels. Try to reaffirm the benefits for their productivity, creativity, and personal development to keep them engaged with their responsibilities at all times.
Help them understand that implementing the measures they learned for protecting information is something that they need to start implementing into their daily routine at work, and you won’t go far wrong. Once again, the support of a managed team in the background certainly aids the cause.
Help Them Become Advocates
Positivity is contagious in all aspects of business, but it’s especially palpable in the world of cybersecurity. Studies find that leading organizations are 4.3x more effective at prioritizing cybersecurity. So, you should let those who are passionate about security boost the rest of your business team. You might even consider ways of having customized protocols for each department.
Aside from leveraging success through passionate IT employees, temporary rotations can be incorporated to ensure that the wealth of knowledge is spread throughout the corporation. The passion of the specialist can encourage new departments to naturally up their game while the benefits are reciprocated as the rotating staff members pick up new insights. In turn, this helps create a stronger collective unit.
Healthy competition between departments can help companies level up their overall cybersecurity systems. Meanwhile, peer-to-peer recognition is actually 36% more effective than manager-only recognition. As an employer, you must still reward employees that champion and promote advanced security measures. Pavlovian condition can work wonders for their approach to digital security.
Conclusion
When you have hackers working on the clock to breach your security system, you want to ensure that your security measures are equally as active and that those using the system are aware of the pitfalls as well as the safety precautions.
The Common Vulnerabilities and Exploits database lists over 11,000 potential vulnerabilities. While it’s impossible to achieve invincibility, putting the right protocols in place is the only way to keep the company protected. Regardless of your industry, now is the time to make cybersecurity a priority.