(Newswire.net — April 21, 2020) — In the real world of cybersecurity, a company’s unassuming employees are primary targets and the schemes to trip them up are far less exciting than you might find in a feature film. Perhaps the best way to protect an organization’s critical data is to empower employees with essential defense tools. Without ongoing training and threat awareness, otherwise loyal staff members remain a cybersecurity risk at no fault of their own.
What Does Cybersecurity Training Entail?
Cybersecurity awareness training begins with company decision-makers acknowledging that employees are your organization’s weakest link. Whether you have an in-house technical staff or outsource to a managed IT firm with cybersecurity expertise, hackers direct a wealth of schemes at the least trained individuals.
Digital thieves are fully aware that far too few outfits invest the time or resources to empower workers. Because employees are deprived of knowledge about emerging and sophisticated threats, they are put at increased risk of falling prey to schemes by cybercriminals. These are methods digital bandits tweak and refine to trip up workers and breach a business network.
- Spam: Generic invitations to join professional networks and other platforms are routinely delivered in the form of email, digital advertisements, and messaging on social media sites. These appear harmless until someone clicks on a malicious link.
- Phishing: Hackers have been overwhelmingly successful utilizing bulk email as a delivery system. These schemes may be general in nature and offer enticements to download a file, click on a link, or provide personal identity data. Many are highly sophisticated, and employees are highly vulnerable without ongoing knowledge about emerging threats.
- Spear Phishing: In some instances, digital con artists will target specific individuals within an organization. They may leverage information from professional websites and social media to increase confidence about downloading a file laced with ransomware, spyware, or other types of malicious software. Other schemes involve clicking on a link or responding with critical network information, sometimes called “Social Engineering,” among others.
“A cybersecurity awareness training program is one of the most cost-effective security tools available to small and medium-sized businesses. With human error causing over 92% of data breaches, businesses need to understand the importance of focusing on the weakest link by empowering employees through self-improvement, personal protection, and engaging training that is relate-able, not demeaning,” Don Baham of Kraft Technology Group reportedly said.
Organization-wide training and awareness harden cybersecurity defenses by making even the weakest link strong enough to identify and sidestep hacker schemes. Training and awareness also tend to improve routine measures such as changing usernames and passwords regularly, as well as complying with the unique strategy developed between industry leaders and third-party experts.
Recommended Cybersecurity Training Programs
Recognizing that employees require the determined tools and resources to form an operation’s front line of defense, the Kraft Technology Group offers an EmployeeGuard service. The program “provides continuous security awareness training throughout the year, real-time dark web scanning and alerting, automated phishing exercises, and customizable security policy and procedure templates for businesses,” Baham confirms.
Other industry leaders such as Nick Allo of SemTech IT Solutions agree that ongoing training and awareness rank among an organization’s best investments.
“I highly recommend Sophos Intercept X EDR, Allo reportedly said. “It gives small business award-winning protection from ransomware and other threats with capabilities to trace where the outbreak came from.”
Such programs deliver benefits that include complying with government mandates, establishing a company-wide security culture, and turning your weakest link a determined cybersecurity asset.