Developments in technology provide the means for ever greater cybersecurity protections—but along with that, cyber criminals are finding more advanced methods for infiltrating defenses.
One of the biggest cybersecurity weaknesses plaguing many businesses actually has relatively little to do with technology and lots to do with your employees: According to the 2019 Cost of a Data Breach report, 24% of all hacks are due to human error.
That means that even if you can put technological barriers in place for 76% of your business’s potential security gaps, nearly a quarter of potential attacks could still succeed because of the human element required to make business decisions.
Fortunately, modern cybersecurity measures include in-depth training for staff that can transform the human aspect of your operation from a weakness to a cybersecurity asset.
The Risk that Human Error Poses
Gaps in cybersecurity make up some of the biggest funnels of money out of a corporation. That’s why the cybersecurity industry is worth over $100 billion—a number projected to continuously increase and fully double by 2028.
Human error presents a rare weakness in your cybersecurity that all the advanced security in the world can’t fully patch. If an employee ignores or overrides warnings, falls for a phishing scam, or fails to take proper security measures, your systems could be left vulnerable.
Employee security awareness training covers a host of data protection methods and instructional blind spots that many executives didn’t even know they needed.
For example, email phishing scams target vulnerable employees in your business, often by impersonating a higher-up. Thinking that they are following directions from an employer, a targeted associate ends up giving sensitive information over to a crook in what is considered the easiest, and the most common style of phishing: email phishing.
Due to the prevalence of socially engineered cyber attacks (attacks that rely on manipulation to convince people to divulge information), the state of Texas recognized the importance of employee training and passed a bill mandating security awareness training for all local and state government employees.
How Security Awareness Training Protects Your Business
Reversing mindsets and illuminating the fact that all employees are potential targets, and potential defenders for your systems, transforms your team of associates from regular workers into cybersecurity assets.
Security training works by:
- Conducting initial tests, including simulated phishing attacks, to establish a baseline for your current security.
- Educating your employees using the world’s largest library of security awareness training content, which includes interactive modules, videos, games, posters, and newsletters.
- Testing your staff’s training using best-in-class, fully automated simulated phishing attacks in an environment that perfectly mimics real-world threats.
- Evaluating the data with on-demand, enterprise-level reporting to track the progress of your team and how well they’re able to defend your organization.
Running employees through specialized courses that expose them to different phishing and malware scams is a crucial step in activating your outermost defenses against security breaches.
Why Security Training Methods Are Effective
Despite the exponential progress of software security programs and apps, malware attacks and scams still hold their grip on global corporate life and are specifically designed to overcome methodical technological defenses.
Scammers know that every socially engineered attack they launch ultimately lands in the hands of a living, breathing worker. For this reason, the safeguard of the human mind is paramount to staving off strengthened attacks. Security training correctly assumes that your team is not only full of irreplaceable workers, but also potential assets for your business’s security.
By equipping your staff with greater security knowledge, you not only patch a potentially disastrous security gap, but also enforce it by turning every one of your employees into a cybersecurity asset.
We design our training methods from the floor up to utilize the inherent human discernment skills that your team possesses to create the ultimate buffer between cyber attacks and your network.
