Getting your staff to care about your organizational network and data security may be more difficult than you might think, but it’s not a lost cause. Today, keeping your business’ organizational security strong relies heavily on your staff’s willingness to follow the right practices, so today we thought we’d give you seven tips to get your people to care about security
Be Up Front
One of the main reasons employees don’t often care about cybersecurity is the overt secrecy surrounding it. Today’s organization needs to come clean when it comes to the constant threats that are out there. If you want your people to have a vested interest in keeping your business’ information systems and data secure, you need to level with them. After all, they can’t help if they don’t understand.
Make it a Personal Investment
Your company holds a lot of your employees personal data. Let them know that along with any sensitive and proprietary data that could be lost in a data breach, that their data could also be vulnerable. In order to sufficiently secure your data and theirs, they need to know what’s at stake if they don’t actively follow cybersecurity procedures.
Top Down Security
Every member of your organization needs to understand that they could be targeted by hackers and fall victim to these threats. The more your employees understand that management is actively complying with security policies, the more willing they will be to alter the way they consider cybersecurity.
Gamify Your Process
People tend to be more engaged when there is incentive baked into a policy. Gamification is the strategy of scoring a person based on their efforts. This strategy works wonders for productivity so it stands to reason that it would work for cybersecurity awareness and following any organizational policy that’s in place to keep your systems and data secure.
Standardize Procedure
One of the most important variables to get your people to follow the rules, is to have them in place to begin with. In cybersecurity, confusion can be a huge albatross, so ensuring that everyone is playing with the same rulebook is a must. This includes building procedures to handle attacks such as phishing as well as password hygiene and many other security-based policies. The more consistent your procedures are, the more likely your staff is to understand and follow them.
Start from Day One
With all the threats that are out there at the moment, you will want to stress the importance of cybersecurity with current and new employees, alike. If you start hammering home the importance of compliance with security procedures from the day an employee starts at your business, the more likely they will continue to comply with them as they undertake their job; which for most of your staff, isn’t strictly cybersecurity.
Keep Training
Employee’s Security training is becoming commonplace at almost every organization, largely because the threats that it faces could have devastating consequences. You will want to invest in comprehensive training and re-training to ensure that your employees understand the importance of your cybersecurity initiatives, and that they are up-to-date on any and all changes to policy or strategy.
Cybersecurity is a team effort today and if your organization isn’t stressing the importance of it, it’s only a matter of time until it rears its head. If you would like to learn more about training your employees on the best practices of cybersecurity, creating a cybersecurity policy that works to keep your information systems secure, or if you would just like to talk to one of our IT professionals about cybersecurity best practices and procedures, give us a call today at 651-234-0895.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does cybersecurity awareness help employees within an organization?
With the increasing threats across the globe, it is becoming extremely important for the employees of every organization to be thorough in their knowledge of cyber security. A simple training session can enable the employees to know and beware about the –
- Device loss or theft
- Social engineering tactics
- Phishing attacks
- Malware and ransomware attacks
- Zero-day exploits
- Macro and script attacks
- Botnet attacks
When the employees are aware of the severity and consequences of these attacks, they are more likely to stay on top of OS Patches and antivirus updates, unlike earlier when they would almost always neglect them. They are also more likely to ensure that they accept all critical upgrades for their devices.
How can employees keep their devices safe from Cybersecurity Attacks?
In order for employees to stay safe from cyber-attacks, they must –
- Understand and respect the difference between personal and corporate usage of devices
- Have a work account that is well-monitored
- Agree to have restricted installations and web filters on their work device
- Be aware of the possibilities of data loss and theft
- Ensure that they follow all security patches and OS updates.
What are some of the easiest ways to spot suspicious activities related to cybersecurity threats?
Employees can easily gauge a threat of cyber security attack by noticing one or more of the following –
- Unexplained appearance of new apps or programs on their devices
- Unknown pop-ups during startup
- Numerous pop-ups while working on day-to-day tasks
- Slowed down the functioning of the device
- Unknown extensions in the browser
- Unexplained tabs in the browser
- Loss of control of the mouse or keyboard
Does the US Government Provide Any Courses on Cybersecurity Awareness?
While they don’t host any program themselves, the National Institute of Standards and Technology does offer a list of free and low-cost online training content. These courses include webinars, quizzes, and certifications, and are specifically designed for employees.
