How cybersecurity policy training prevents breaches before they happen.

Key Overview

• Cybersecurity awareness training teaches employees how to prevent, manage, and recover from cyberattacks.
• Cybersecurity awareness training is important because the majority of cyberattacks can be attributed to human error.
• Cybersecurity training should be a consistent, ongoing process because the technological environment is constantly changing.
• Things that should be covered in cybersecurity awareness include phishing education, policy training, and the cost of neglecting protocols.

What is cybersecurity awareness training?

Cybersecurity awareness training teaches employees and contractors about potential security threats along with methods for preventing, managing, and recovering from attacks. Prevention and recovery training will play a critical role in your business’s survival after an attack.

Cybersecurity awareness training makes employees aware of the means, methods, and impact of security threats like:

• Ransomware attacks
• Malware attacks
• Phishing and spear-phishing schemes
• Hacking
• Data breaches and data leaks
• Insider threats

This important training also includes enforcing company policies designed to support your organization’s security protocols. For example, if your organization employs access control based on a user’s device, you’ll need to have a company policy that prohibits employees from sharing devices. You don’t want someone with top-tier access to the company network giving their laptop to someone who has lower-level access.

Why is cybersecurity awareness training important?

Since the majority of incidents happen because of human error, training is the best method to prevent cybersecurity attacks. Unless your employees are certified cybersecurity professionals, they won’t intuitively know how to spot threats. Some threats will be obvious, but not everything. Also, untrained employees are more likely to do things that put your company at risk, like sharing login credentials and accessing company accounts from unsecured, public Wi-Fi networks.

Cybersecurity awareness training should be ongoing

Regular, ongoing cybersecurity training is essential for limiting the risk of your business experiencing a cyberattack. However, the majority of organizations don’t hold ongoing training. The result for some is devastating. In fact, 60% of companies go out of business within six months of an attack.

Even worse? Most businesses don’t survive after a ransomware attack. The problem is that ransomware is often distributed through emails as downloads that appear to come from co-workers or other trusted contacts. If your employees don’t know how to spot suspicious emails, or if they don’t have a habit of refusing to download anything they’re not expecting, your company could get hit hard.

Periodic cybersecurity policy training creates good habits

Human memory is fallible, and it’s not easy for employees to remember everything they need to know in order to fulfill their roles. When it comes to cybersecurity, it takes time and reinforcement to create habits around best practices. Until information is solidified, employees need regular reminders.

It’s critical to conduct ongoing cybersecurity policy training for your employees and contractors at least every six months. It’s even more effective when you hold cybersecurity training every four months.

This topic was explored by The Advanced Computing Systems Association when conducting an investigation of phishing awareness and education over time. The study found that people need regular reminders about cybersecurity. Study participants successfully identified phishing emails four months after their training, but at the six-month mark that success began to wane.

The study also confirmed something other researchers have also discovered: that video and interactive methods of training provide the longest value in terms of how long participants retained the information.

Taking the information from this study and others, it’s clear that businesses with regular, interactive cybersecurity training will develop employees who are less likely to fall for phishing schemes and make other careless cybersecurity mistakes.

What should be included in cybersecurity awareness training?

End-user cybersecurity awareness training will vary depending on what systems your organization has in place. However, here are some basics you’ll want to address:

Phishing education for employees

Phishing and spear-phishing schemes are surprisingly effective. Including phishing education for your employees is essential. Not everyone has the innate awareness to question emails that look like they’re coming from a co-worker or trusted contact. Employees need to understand how easy it is to spoof an email address and they need to know how to view an email header to verify the real sender if they receive a suspicious email.

Cybersecurity policy training

Once you have a set of cybersecurity policies, it’s critical to train your staff to follow your policies to the letter—no exceptions. In fact, many companies make certain policy violations a fireable offense, like password sharing. It may sound harsh, but sharing a password with the wrong person can give them access to sabotage your company. This is something that happens often, so the possibility can’t be ignored.

It’s also critical to have a specific social media policy to prevent oversharing. Sometimes, cybercriminals look for information shared by employees on social media that they use in social engineering attacks.

The cost of neglecting security protocols

Your employees need to get the impact of a security incident in order to feel motivated to stay vigilant. If they don’t know the potential consequences to your organization, they won’t have a reason to make the effort.

Your company’s cybersecurity awareness training should make the potential damage clear. For instance, the average cost of a reportable data breach in 2020 was $3.86 million.

Frequent, ongoing cybersecurity training is best

Frequent cybersecurity training is your best defense against cyberattacks like ransomware, malware, and phishing attacks. It just takes one incident to cause a major disruption, so take the time to create a strong ongoing training program to keep best practices fresh in your team’s mind. Ongoing training will ensure your employees develop skills that will eventually become a habit.

If you haven’t launched regular cybersecurity training yet, now is a great time to start. Consult with an IT security professional to develop your company’s security policy, methods of enforcement, and ongoing training.