October was Cybersecurity Awareness Month, which is supported by the National Cyber Security Alliance and the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). The goal of Cybersecurity Awareness Month is to help organizations and individuals understand their responsibilities when it comes to cyber awareness. And it is important that you have a strong cyber awareness so you can ensure your employees understand how to protect your organization, your employees, and your customers.
What Is Cyber Awareness?
Cyber awareness is ensuring your leadership and your staff are always conscious of cybersecurity as they carry out their daily tasks. Leadership is responsible for ensuring their employees are educated on what cybersecurity is and trained on how to maintain it and recognize potential risks.
Keep in mind that every employee doesn’t need to know every single cybersecurity concept. However, they do need to have all the information that is relevant to their role at your organization so they can be empowered to make the right choices to stay safe when they are online.
Why Cyber Awareness Is Important
Cyberattacks on businesses are increasing at an alarming rate. The average number of attacks per company increased by 31% between 2020 and 2021. In 2021, 85% of all data breaches were the result of human actions, with 94% of all malware being delivered through email. In most cases, phishing was the mode of attack, with the emails appearing to have come from a legitimate source, which coerces a person to share personal or sensitive information.
Not only that, but it is easy for cybercriminals to perform a phishing attack. All they need to do is buy a phishing kit off the dark web. These attacks are most often emails asking for usernames and passwords, along with personally identifiable information. With this level of risk out there, it is critical that your employees be fully educated on how to recognize and avoid falling victim to such an attack. This includes
How to Approach Cyber Awareness
When it comes to training your employees on cyber awareness, it is best to take a role-based approach. This means that your technical staff will receive different training than your non-technical staff. IT teams need to be aware of things such as permissions, data management, and regulatory requirements. Your non-technical staff doesn’t need awareness at this level, but they need to understand how to create a strong password and how to recognize potentially malicious emails and links, and how to avoid them.
Create a Cyber Awareness Culture
When you promote cyber awareness and adequately train your staff, you will empower them to be proactive in their use of cybersecurity methods. And you can easily tailor your cyber awareness training to the needs of your organization. The result will be a culture of cyber awareness that will increase your cybersecurity by reducing the number of incidents you encounter and improving your ability to recover after an incident.
Contact Platinum Technologies today to find out how we can help you plan your digital transformation to get the most out of today’s technology.
