Humans are your biggest security risk
As the Equifax cyber breach continues to astonish the world in its magnitude, businesses once again consider their need for a robust cybersecurity strategy. However, many of them focus solely on the technology. In actual fact, they should be considering their employees and how training is a relatively low-tech and cost effective way to prevent attacks.
Cybersecurity Training is Important
Human error is a major cause of cybersecurity incidents in businesses today. Along with the errors they make, humans are just not as easy to patch as technology. This is why it is vital to ensure your employees are fully trained to prevent successful cyber attacks.
As you are no doubt aware, every business is at risk of a cyber attack. Preventing a breach is always better than dealing with the aftermath of one. Cybersecurity training is low cost and can offer a very strong defence to avoid a breach. It is a well known fact that at least 90% of all successful cybersecurity incidents are a result of human error.
How can training help?
Cybersecurity training should help employees learn about different threats, how to identify them and what to do if they notice them. This is usually undertaken through real-life scenarios.
Employee Awareness
A human error can be simple, which makes it easy for training to help. Employees need to be taught to avoid certain activities including:
- Opening attachments in emails from an unknown origin;
- Clicking on links without verifying the authenticity of them;
- Replying to unfamiliar contacts;
- Being pressurised into disclosing sensitive information.
This is why often a business simply needs to concentrate on making their employees aware of these threats and how to mitigate them.
Password Protection
We use passwords for so many areas of the Internet that it can make it hard to remember each and every one. This is why generally people will have 2-3 passwords which they rely on. They are easy to remember and therefore easy to guess.
Plus, if employees use the same passwords across multiple accounts, a cyber criminal only has to access one account before they are likely to access them all.
Proper training regarding password creation can avoid this. Again, it is as simple as employees being made aware of the possible consequences of their actions and the destruction an error can cause to the business.
The Risk of the Internet
With so many of our devices and documents now connected to the Internet via the cloud, the risk is even greater. Yes, these devices can boost our productivity at work, but employees need to be aware of the risks these devices can pose. Training would allow employees to understand this.
Further, with more and more information online, it is easy for criminals to build a picture of someone based on their online profiles. With information comes the ability to engage in social engineering. Training can help employees to understand the risks of the information they have online. As well as what to do if they suspect they have been a victim of social engineering.
Responding to Incidents
Unless your employees have the ability to identify a breach in progress and know what do when they identify it, your company will be far more liable to fall foul of the most basic of cyber attacks. If they suspect there has been a breach, they need to react to it. By providing them with the correct training concerning incident reporting and response, you will dramatically reduce the likelihood of cyber attacks getting through.
CounterHack can help to ensure you are properly protected. On top of training it is always important to test your employees. We provide this service. Contact us now.
