Security Awareness Training: The Human Firewall

It is crucial to know what security awareness training is and why your employees need such recurrent training.

Firstly, a security awareness program ensures that your staff is well informed about the latest types of threats, lowering the risk of a successful cyberattack while improving the overall security of your organization.

Avoid Data Breaches

According to recent studies, most breaches occur because of employee negligence. These are usually small mistakes that can cause irreversible losses.

Therefore, training which teaches employees how to spot suspicious emails is recommended. For instance, getting tens of emails on a daily business is a common thing, but differentiating between an informative email and a phishing email is crucial. There are cases where employees accidentally open attachments of phishing emails. A basic security awareness training would prevent that.

Increase Security Measures

Security awareness training always highlights the importance of monitoring and tracking of any sort of suspicious activity.

Prevent Downtime

In the unfortunate case of a breach, it can be costly and time consuming to repair and reinstate normal business operations. If your staff is familiar with cybersecurity basic principles and realize their role in keeping the organization secure, there are far less chances of a cyberattack to succeed.

Ensure Compliance

In case your organization handles sensitive or classified information and regulatory compliance is required, compliance violations are fineable.

Putting together a security awareness training plan will ensure your personnel understands the compliance policies and how to handle sensitive data, reducing the risk of a data breach.

Save Reputation

There are a few industries, for instance, healthcare, banking, and real estate, which can be easily trapped, and attackers often create confusion among potential victims. The right training can protect the reputation of your organization.

Develop Security Knowledge

Unfortunately, there are still many who don’t know much about security awareness and safety measures.

Nowadays, scams are presented in such a sophisticated manner that employees can easily fall into the trap. With the added knowledge, at least the basic safety measures will be followed keeping organizations safe. For better security and safety, there are service providers who can assist the organizations with the best support.

Also, without official training on security, different departments or locations of a business may utilize different principles. Security should be a cohesive process across all departments.

For the best results, training needs to be delivered in a consistent manner, and to fit employees’ busy schedules.

Save Time & Money

Organizations that have not trained their staff might face data loss/theft due to carelessness. Recovering from a data breach requires lots of money and time. It also tampers with the brand image of the company for a certain time, which can affect the target audience and their perception of your brand.

NOTE! According to Sophos’ State of Ransomware Report 2021, the average total cost of remediation from a ransomware attack was around $1.85 million.

Maintain Good Reputation

An organization with security-aware personnel will be able to maintain a good reputation and collaboration with its customers, since most c-level executives are reluctant to do business with an untrustworthy organization.

A business that is frequently subject to security incidents will eventually lose customers, regardless of the actual impact of any particular data breach.

Conclusion

Undoubtedly, security awareness training will only improve the state of security of your organization.

At StratusPointIT, we offer comprehensive cybersecurity awareness solutions that help your employees protect themselves and your organization from various types of cyberattacks, including phishing, malware, pretexting, and other social engineering attacks.

Regular training will create better habits. When something becomes a habit, people tend to follow it. Make cybersecurity a priority and ensure your business stays security focused.