The greatest threat to your business cybersecurity is, contrary to what you would expect, internal. We are not talking about spies or infiltrated competitor agents. The real threat you should consider is your trusted employees.
They are often just a few careless mouse clicks away from costing your business a fortune, without having any malicious intent in the first place. Employees can do harm to your business by visiting infected websites, responding to phishing emails, using business email through public Wi-Fi on an unencrypted connection, or something as simple as having one password for access to all business assets and personal accounts. Neglecting cybersecurity can cost companies tens of thousands of pounds, hours of downtime and loss of customers. The most alarming fact is, that cyber attacks happen every day more than 4,000 times, and can strike the same company several times per year.
Such attacks are often financially motivated, a great example of it is ransomware. Attacks can also be more directed toward obtaining specific data. Confidential business information that is at stake would be your company finances, customer and employee personal data, highly valuable intellectual property which is more often than not, also the most vulnerable asset to cybercriminals.
Preventing cyber attacks is a sound investment considering the high risk and costs involved in recovery from damages. The infographic below is designed to provide companies get a better insight into how cyber attacks can harm their business and what they can do about it. The guide explains the main targets of cybercriminals, the role employees play in cybersecurity and the benefits of cybersecurity awareness training. By regularly training your employees, your company will benefit from a security-first awareness that emphasises prevention, detection, reporting and learning from mistakes.
Types and styles of cybersecurity awareness training include:
Classroom training
Instructors will teach your employees in person. Which equates to stronger engagement throughout the course, possibility to ask questions and raise concerns
Online training
The fastest and most comfortable for your employees, they are very effective as long as they are completed by employees.
Visual aids
Great take on security comes also from interactive assists on your employee's computers. These will actively protect your company and make employees aware of key points where threats can be detected and prevented.
Phishing campaigns
Best way to see the current state of security awareness in your business? Test your employees with simulated attacks. These will give you and your employees great insight, learning opportunity on how to detect attacks, where to report them and learn from mistakes in a controlled manner, that didn’t cost your business a dime.
Employees can be the weakest link or biggest asset to the overall security of the business if they are given the right tools and proper threat awareness programme.
