Adequate training is undoubtedly the top defense against cybersecurity breaches.
IT policies, firewalls, physical security, and other technical precautions are completely necessary, but teaching workers to lay the groundwork for a secure, strong front line defense to support all related security measures is the most vital.
Obstacles, including budget concerns, stubborn company culture, time constraints, or a lack of cybersecurity best practices drive, can seem overpowering, especially to smaller firms with limited resources. Fortunately, there are many reasonable solutions to each of these roadblocks that can allow organizations to be more secure.
Inadequate cybersecurity awareness
Training commonly falls entirely under the umbrella of the HRs. While some HR professionals are completely tech-savvy, they struggle with managing many competing demands, and only a few have the bandwidth to stay current on cybersecurity and technology best practices. While there is an adequate amount of information available online, all of this data can seem overwhelming often offering conflicting advice.
Employees Slack with cybersecurity Expectations
So, the cybersecurity training responsibility should lay with the CISO, instead of the HRs.
The good news is that today, one doesn’t need to be an expert in cybersecurity to help the workforce comprehend the basics of protecting themselves and the firm’s information and assets.
The training should encompass important points like – password management, recognizing phishing campaigns, two-factor authentication, solutions to both minor and major security issues, and reporting suspicious activity
The question of Expense
It can be tough to get budget allocated to training. It’s easy for the leadership to brush off such educational needs for an organization, expecting that the HR will somehow fill in all the gaps.
The solution is to learn how to speak the language of business. Considering the cybersecurity training, the path to support C-suite is through Risk Management and based on ROI (Return on Investment). In other words, the awareness of ‘how will money invest in cybersecurity training work for the bottom line of the business’.
There are some clear benefits of investing in the professional cybersecurity courses. Firstly, the average cost of a cyber-attack mounts up to almost 4 million dollars, and this number increases each year. Quality training can help avoid these enormous costs. In addition, cybersecurity training and certifications can protect organizations from lawsuits in the event of any data breach. The more reliable, robust, and more consistent the training program is, the better defense it is in the legal proceedings. In a single year, 62% of businesses experienced a particular form of social engineering or phishing attack. Showing such numbers and real-life repercussions of cyber threats can help make a case for investing in training.
For ensuring these expenses stay within the budget, companies can leverage downloadable content to webinars and articles, low-cost resources, which are abundant. Firms with low budgets should tap on these.
Lack of time
Just as budgets need to include cybersecurity investment to prevent significant profit loss, organizations must invest time in cybersecurity training.
The average amount of downtime due to ransomware attacks in the Q2 of 2019 was almost ten days. That adds up to 80 hours that each worker is stopped from working altogether. Even after systems are back and up, getting to the source of the attack to ensure that it doesn’t repeat, wastes precious time, diverting valuable resources from innovations.
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The huge amount of time spent on fighting a cyber-attack justifies the need to focus on training – recognizing the signs of a phishing attack or scam to audit their professional and personal credentials regularly.
Company culture
Developing a robust cybersecurity culture demands a percolated message of accountability from the top, to drive significant organizational behavior change. To get everyone on board, leaders should ensure that their teams realize how a data breach impacts them personally. Many employees fail to understand the far-reaching repercussions of a cyberattack – and this is precisely where the knowledge gap seeps in.
When the company’s workforce fails to practice good cyber health, it puts everyone at risk. Understanding how everything is tied together at a macro-level will help build the company’s culture to strengthen the cybersecurity framework.
No organization is immune; a cyberattack can happen to anyone. When the time and budget can be found for training, company culture will automatically be shifted through education, and the right cybersecurity habits can be inculcated through online resources or by purchasing a professional course. The need of the hour is – working towards tighter cybersecurity to protect customers, workers, and their bottom line. And, no compromises should be made in this regard what so ever.
