Your business’s IT team has an in-depth understanding of the threats that face your corporate network every day and the behaviors and practices that increase the risk of a devastating cyber incident. Your other teams, most of whom simply log into their workstations every day without much thought of what’s lurking beyond the screen, do not have as much insight.
That’s why it’s so critical to provide continuous training in cybersecurity best practices to everyone who works for your company. Your employees don’t want to cause a problem or do anything that could cause a breach, but if they lack knowledge of the basics of data protection, it’s easy to make mistakes that cause a ripple effect and harm your business.
How To Provide Employee Training in Cybersecurity
Many companies provide a basic overview of security policies and best practices as part of the onboarding process for new employees. While this is a critical element, it has two major weaknesses:
- Employees often experience information overload in their first few days of onboarding and may not fully digest the information and instructions.
- The cyber threat landscape is constantly evolving. Training in cybersecurity best practices should not be a one-time session but rather an ongoing effort to keep everyone apprised of new developments.
With those weaknesses in mind, IT needs to develop employee training programs to provide education about new and emerging threats and what they can do to address them, as well as reminders of cybersecurity basics they need to follow every day. Refresher training sessions are just as important as the initial education session, as it’s easy to inadvertently slip into bad habits over time.
The Most Important Best Practices To Cover
When developing a cybersecurity training program, it’s important to make the sessions relatable, understandable, and tailored to different learning styles. Keep in mind that most of the people receiving the training are not IT experts, and aren’t going to respond to jargon or complex concepts.
When choosing the topics to cover, the most important categories include:
- Security policies
- Incident response procedures, or what employees should do when they suspect a security incident
- Password management best practices
- Data protection policies and procedures
- Threat detection and response
One of the most critical elements of cybersecurity training is phishing awareness. Phishing in all its forms is the leading cause of data breaches, as well-meaning employees inadvertently provide sensitive information to bad actors. Teaching workers how to identify and deal with phishing messages can prevent many crippling cyber incidents
Approaches to Cybersecurity Training
Effectively sharing cybersecurity best practices so employees retain the information and apply it to their every activity means using multiple training modalities and message delivery systems. For example, many companies run phishing awareness drills to gauge how well employees respond to phishing messages and identify weak areas. Other methods to improve cybersecurity include asynchronous training modules, in-person training sessions, regular newsletters or email blasts, and videos.
Whatever method you select, a well-trained and prepared workforce armed with cybersecurity best practices is your best tool for protecting your company's network and data.
