Cybersecurity Awareness Guide for Employees - Condition Zebra

An enterprise needs to be proactive when it comes to cybersecurity because employees play an important role to keep the company’s IT infrastructure safe and protected at all times.

Organizations’ employees are one of the greatest risks to their cybersecurity, and their negligence is considered the leading cause of data breaches. However, these employees can be a valuable asset for organizations if provided with the required knowledge to identify cyber threats.

In this blog post, we will cover the basics of cyber security awareness and together with all things that need to be taught in an effective cybersecurity training program.

What is security awareness training?

Cybersecurity awareness training is a demonstrated educational approach for improving the risky behaviour in employees that may lead to compromised security. Through the effective delivery of relevant information on subjects, such as social engineering, malware, information security, and industry-specific compliance topics, cybersecurity training enhances employee resilience to cyber attacks.

Employees learn to avoid phishing, malware, and other types of social engineering attacks, identify potential malicious behaviours, follow security best practices and IT policies, report possible security threats and adhere to compliance regulations.

Why do businesses need security awareness training?

As cybercrimes continue to evolve, security awareness training helps organizations reduce help desk costs, secure their overall security investment, and protect their reputation. Implement a training program that significantly lessens the risk of data breaches and security threats via phishing simulations based on real-world cyber attacks and training that covers related compliance and security topics.

Training your staff on cybersecurity safety and best practices creates a sense of empowerment. You can rest assured that your employees will be confident in decision-making while browsing the Internet, filtering through suspicious emails, or creating new passwords. Cybersecurity training will increase your employees’ knowledge about cybersecurity and give them practical skills required to better protect and avoid potential risks or data breaches, ransomware threats, and network attacks.

5 Tips to Boost Cybersecurity Awareness Among Employees

Here are 5 practical tips that can you implement in your organisation’s to increase cybersecurity awareness for the benefit of your company.

1. Start with CEO leadership

Cybersecurity awareness is finally getting the attention it deserves. As the number of data breaches and security threats continues to rise, there should be more emphasis on managing cyber risks to lower the chance of potential attacks. Cybersecurity is the responsibility of everyone in the organization, but resilient companies need strong CEO leadership. If the CEO of a company is taking cybersecurity seriously, it will penetrate the organization and form a culture of increased cybersecurity awareness.

2. Know your organization tolerances

Your organization should evaluate the threat landscape and detect the top risks in creating an efficient cybersecurity awareness program. It will give you a better understanding of the real-world threats that can compromise your organization’s security. Your risk tolerance should be defined at the outset for implementing the right security measures depending on the actual threats faced. Taking time to identify the risks properly will be effective for the long term security plans.

3. Focus on high-risk groups

An important factor in making an effective security awareness program is to make sure that the right training is targeted at the right people. All employees are susceptible to cyber risks, but some have a higher threat profile than others. For example, your Finance and HR departments are mostly targeted by cybercriminals because of their privileged access to sensitive data. Your senior executives, CEO, and CFO are also the main target due to high-level access to valuable information. If a senior executive becomes a target, the results could be devastating.

4. Deploy phishing campaigns

Phishing is a major threat to organization privacy and security. It’s one of the most common cyberattacks against organizations. It gets you into providing sensitive information, such as credit card information, login credentials, or other restricted data. The simulations implemented in a safe environment test whether employees identify or become victims of a phishing scam. Moreover, deploying a phishing campaign provides training on how to detect, avoid, and report these attacks to protect organizations.

5. Get your policy management up to date

Policies are essential in making boundaries for individuals, relationships, processes, and transactions within your company. These provide a governance framework and help define compliance, which is essential in today’s increasingly complicated regulatory landscape. An efficient policy management system has a consistent approach to creating policies, adds shape to organization procedures, and makes it easier to track staff responses and attestation. As a result, it can help you streamline your internal processes, efficiently target the flaws presenting the highest risk to data security, and demonstrate compliance with legislative requirements.

Conclusion

Employees play an important role in running a secure business. A negligent and untrained workforce can put your organization at risk of data breaches. Organizations should adopt a reliable Information Security Policy that must encompass the crucial guidelines required to prevent imminent cyber incidents.

Condition Zebra is offering specialized training, in Network Penetration Testing and Web Application Penetration Testing. Both of this training program is high value because there is a practical session as well, so far we have 6200+ IT Professionals from various background who have attended the training.

Boost employees’ cybersecurity awareness with Condition Zebra IT Security Awareness Talk. We make security awareness training interesting for employees and easy to implement that is supported with an ongoing training program that considerably reduces the risk of data breaches and security attacks.

If you’re searching for cybersecurity awareness training for employees, choose our service that goes beyond security training and focuses on skills and implementation.

Business Name: Condition Zebra (M) Sdn Bhd
Address: Level 3-10, Block F, Phileo Damansara 1,
Jalan 16/11 Off Jalan Damansara,
46350 Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia.
Phone: +603-7665 2021