Modern day businesses are largely or in fact wholly dependent on information technology for their operations hence the cyber security of an organisation is literally the overall security of the organisation, and this is now well recognised that the key to this security are the people working in the organisation. Their conduct in the day to day operations of the organisation is supposed to be done with not only precision but with utmost caution because of ever looming network security threats. In regards to this, mistakes can often happen leading the cybercriminals to breach the systems security of your business and compromise confidential data along with all the damage it does to your company. This can prove to be extremely fateful to the business.
Networks becoming harder to breach is the main reason as to why the employees are now the main targets or source for cyber criminals to violate the security of an organisation.
The best way to prevent data breach in your organisation is by ensuring that your employees are cyber aware. By improving cyber security awareness, companies of any scale can improve their cybersecurity and in turn reduce the risk of breaches, paving the way to a cyber aware workforce.
Now firstly let’s discuss how “Cyber Security Awareness” is defined exactly – Cyber security awareness means empowering the employees and all the staff connected to your organisation to be responsible towards their role in protecting your organisation from any potential system security threats. Cyber security awareness uses credentialing, resources, various tools and solutions along with training the employees with required knowledge to protect your organisation.
By creating a cyber security aware business culture, you can make sure your workplace as a whole that is your employees and other staff, are aware and alert about the existence of cyber threats and that they fully recognize the potential disastrous impact these can cause to the quality of your business. Moreover, only a cyber security aware workforce can make sure that such threats are proactively tackled and reduced. The famous phrase – “Prevention is Better than Cure”, aptly applies in this case. Especially for small and medium scale organisations it can be very hard to recover if a major security breach happens, so they must pursue cost effective cyberawareness programs to implement a sturdy defense strategy in place against the likely cyber threats.
Secondly, why is cyber security awareness important. It is crucial because early detection of a data breach or cyberattack can virtually “save” a company in many instances. It can save not only the company’s reputation, but also its capital, investments and overall credibility. So to strengthen the core awareness about the magnitude of the importance of the issue, cyber security training for employees should be done as a course rather than a one time reminder. In recent times many organisations have been hard pressed to activate their business continuity plans and switch to remote working. But reports and surveys suggest this has also lead to an increase in the ratio of cyber attacks. As a matter of fact the attacks have doubled in numbers in just a span of last 5 years.
Most Important Cyber Security Awareness Tips:
There are many ways though, with the implementation of which, the organizations can create a cyber security aware environment in their company. Here we are giving some of the most important cyber security awareness tips through which the business can raise its information security awareness among employees:
1. Declare Cyber Security a High Priority issue in your Business
Doing this will send a strong message to your staff about the gravity high importance of the issue and they will be more careful than usual. The more safely and securely the staff operates, it would ensure that better protected the security of a company’s network solutions and sensitive data are.
2. Make a Committee of Senior Management
Engaging with influential and senior employees of the company regarding the issue would not only raise the general importance of the issue of cyber security in the organisation but also the involvement of the company’s most experienced staff would bring all their experience together ensuring better strategies are made to counter the system data breaching problems.
3. Set up effective Cyber Security Policies in Place which have been Applied Around the Business World for their Reliability
Many of the most basic attacks are avoidable if existing effective policies and procedures which have been tried and tested around the world of business are followed and implemented in the best possible manner.
4. Conduct Training Courses for your Employees
It is a thing of primary importance to ensure that your company arranges regular training programs for its employees to give them deep insight into the types of security threats and the possible precautionary measures they can take. Though it might take a bit of a chunk of your budget but it is worth it.
5. Right Training, Right People
Ensure that right training is focused at the “right people”. Because although all users are susceptible to cyber threats but certain employees are more vulnerable especially those with access to more sensitive data hence it is important to focus more on them and pay special attention to their training.
6. Strict Rules regarding Online Activity in your Organisation
Most of the cyber attacks are a result of information unknowingly provided by employees. Therefore do not be hesitant to make certain strict rules for business transactions, emailing tasks, and browsing for the employees, alongside the installment of most reliable anti-virus software available for your systems.
7. Training by Storytelling
Various tech management programs are also available for cyber risk awareness which help their client organisations by providing them their experienced services developed over time and implement in your organisation, training your staff in ways which avoid cyber security awareness from being a dry topic. They do so with storytelling which has proven to be an effective and powerful method to make your staff go through the whole program without feeling lost because it is very common to feel disconnected or lost in formal corporate business communications for a majority of workers so it an essential aspect to handle this side of it, whether you hire a professional managed cyber security services provider or construct a custom program in your own company through your own senior/ experienced management and tech personnel.
Closing Thoughts:
Above we have discussed cyber security awareness, its importance and how to improve cyber security. Also we have discussed the cyber threats but cyber threats ever increasing hence it is very vital too that you make sure your organisation is up to date with the newer cyber threats as well, besides the existing ones, because cyber-criminals and hackers find more and newer ways to trespass into your systems with each and every day. So being aware of the newer threats and preparing for them accordingly in advance is the key to best security planning.