No matter what steps you take as a company to secure your on-premises and cloud presence, you still carry a risk of a cyber breach. Unfortunately, a significant portion of this risk comes from the employees who are the lifeblood of your organization. While these people are good at their jobs and generally mean well, they are only human—and humans can make mistakes.
You must minimize the risk posed by the human element in your company by training your employees on cyber safety. Here are five best practices when it comes to employee cyber safety training.
1. Incorporate Cybersecurity Training into the Onboarding Process
You want staff to learn and implement cybersecurity protocols and best practices from day one. This means ensuring employees are trained during the onboarding process. Hence, they understand how cyberattacks can be launched on the company, how to recognize potential attacks, and what to do about them. This includes teaching them the signs of a cyberattack, such as:
- Popups that seem out of place at startup or shutdown or during normal operation
- The device operating slower than normal
- New programs or apps suddenly appearing on the device
- New tabs or extensions appearing in the browser
- Losing control of the keyboard or mouse
2. Maintain Cybersecurity Awareness
Training employees during onboarding is just the beginning. You need to keep awareness high on an ongoing basis. This means keeping employees updated on the latest cybersecurity news and threats and retraining them at least once a year.
3. Conduct Cybersecurity Drills
Create mock threats your employees must recognize, identify, and respond to. This will allow you to see how well the training has been absorbed by seeing how many people click on links or respond to emails vs. how many reports a potential incident. It will also let you demonstrate to employees what an actual cyberattack can look like. You can also adopt a game approach, sending out simulated attacks and having employees identify the type of attack and the action they need to take.
4. Provide Password Security Training
Ensure every employee understands the importance of strong passwords and how to create one. Strong passwords should be long and complex, combining upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and special symbols. Ensure employees change their passwords regularly and understand they should not share them with anyone.
5. Teach Employees Device Safety
Even if employees know the types of attacks and how to recognize them, and even if they have strong passwords, they can still make your company vulnerable by using their devices. Train employees on how to handle devices when they are working remotely. This includes:
- Avoiding public internet whenever possible
- Understanding the difference between personal use and company use
- Ensuring mandatory monitoring, web filtering, and restrictions on installations on all work devices
- Installing the proper cybersecurity tools, patches, and updates on all devices used for work
- Not leaving their devices unattended
Cybersecurity is everyone’s responsibility. It only takes one person clicking on the wrong link to compromise your cybersecurity and cause a breach. The more you train your employees and make cybersecurity an everyday part of the job, the less likely you will experience a cyber incident.
Contact Platinum Technologies today to find out how we can help you ensure your employees are fully trained in cyber safety.
