How to Educate Employees About Cybersecurity

derek.b.lotts · 2019-10-15T08:52:18.458Z

The internet has become an invaluable tool every business has to use in order to succeed in today's market. It allows companies to conduct business more efficiently, increase their employees’ productivity but also to reach more customers and expand quickly. However, the internet is still full of many different individuals and organizations who are trying to find different ways to exploit both people and businesses all over the world. Having a breach in your cybersecurity could have catastrophic consequences for your whole business and the worst part is that people tend to be the largest security vulnerability in any organization. Because of this, it’s absolutely crucial to educate your employees about cybersecurity and how to tell and deal with potential threats. So, to help you out, today we are going to take a look at exactly how to educate your employees about cybersecurity. Talk to your employees The first and the most important step in educating your employees about cybersecurity is to clearly communicate the threats a potential breach could have on your business. They have to understand that not paying attention to what they are doing on the internet and being reckless will have severe negative impacts on them as well. This is crucial as most people don’t really understand how simple things like using their kids’ names as passwords could lead to a breach in cybersecurity. Furthermore, you shouldn’t exclude any of your employees when talking about this no matter how high of a position they have in your business as protecting from this type of threat is everyone's responsibility. Hold regular training sessions Cybersecurity isn’t something you talk to your employees about once after which it just goes away. Educating and remind your employees about cybersecurity is a continuous process that needs to keep being updated. So, a good idea can be to hold a weekly training session where you can have your employees share potential threats they’ve run into or call in speakers to help them learn how to recognize and deal with different types of threats. Teach your employees about the modern cybersecurity tools As the threat of cybersecurity breaches has grown over the years, people have come up with different tools to help combat this issue. Things such as a trustworthy secure web gateway can give your business tools such as bandwidth management, application control, URL filters, traffic control, information control, illegal hotspot/proxy control, behaviour analysis and many more that will help you deal with the threats of cybersecurity. With that being said, you will also have to make your employees understand how these tools work though training sessions or written guides that will help them efficiently deal with any cyber threat that comes at your business. Write up a rulebook One of the more efficient ways of dealing with cybersecurity threats is by encouraging a culture of safe browsing and caution whenever your employees are dealing with resources that are outside of your business’s direct control. You can do this by writing up a rulebook for your employees to learn and follow. However, you should remember that cyber threats can come from other sources than just your employees’ internet activity. For example, something that many businesses often forget is that just throwing away old computers or servers doesn’t mean that the information on them is secure. In fact, if not handled properly, data from such devices can be easily accessed, which is why a lot of precautions should be taken. Make sure that you erase all of the data when throwing away any piece of technology to prevent the possibility for security breaches. Conclusion Cybersecurity represents a real threat for every business in the modern world and finding ways to deal with it will require a constant and persistent effort in education and improvement no matter the cost. Remember that the stakes here are extremely high, as you can lose your entire livelihood with a single breach. So, stay safe and keep educating your employees on how to tell and deal with different cyber threats, reminding them to stay alert at all times.

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