Welcome to the Employee Cybersecurity Training Handbook. You will need it more than ever, considering most breaches are mainly caused by inner issues.
64% of insider threats are caused by careless behavior or human error. However, the insider threat does not mean that the inside person has malicious intentions.
You cannot eliminate human error, however, by providing clear cybersecurity guidelines and regular employee training, you can reduce the frequency and severity of incidents.
Here we explain the best practices in cybersecurity that you should teach your employees.
And we will make a special mention of cybersecurity in cases of teleworking, so fashionable these days.
6 Benefits of Training your Employee Cybersecurity
Ultimately, regular cybersecurity training has the following business impact:
- Achieve better uptime. Data breaches and interruptions can take your business down in hours. The fewer data-related events, the more uptime the business can achieve.
- Reduce costs and overheads. Every data breach, no matter how small, is costly. You can reduce IT costs and overhead by protecting your data.
- Control and protect the organization’s data. An organization’s data is everything today, but it can be on hundreds or thousands of devices. A combination of employee training and technology is a powerful way to control and protect data.
- Adhere to internal policies. Internal policies keep the organization safe from major security events. It also prevents operations from moving slowly. Consistent internal policies will prioritize both efficiency and safety.
- Contain threats. When threats arise, they must be addressed immediately. An organization that can protect and contain threats immediately is an organization that will not suffer an excessive amount of damage before the threat is mitigated.
Cybersecurity is important. But your team will probably focus on doing its job.
Oftentimes, IT security can seem like a barrier to their jobs, and they may not adequately understand the importance of cybersecurity to the business.
Training doesn’t just tell them how to protect their systems. It tells them why they should. So how do you get started?
Both new staff and those who have been with the company for some time must go through standardized cybersecurity training. With this, third party training is ideal.
Training needs to be updated regularly, which is something internal staff often don’t have the opportunity to do. A third party that specializes in cybersecurity training can help.
Finally, employee cybersecurity training using gamification will help convey the message even better.
By rewarding cybersecurity-trained employees and departments that don’t have major security events, you can show that the company truly values enhanced security and that you value employees who are doing their best.
Oftentimes, training is only completed when drastic events occur, which doesn’t happen as often (hopefully so).
But you prefer to ensure your personal and business resources, at all times … Isn’t it?
12 Cybersecurity Preventive Measure to Teach Your Employees
So, the following cybersecurity measures are made to prepare your employees to the maximum for what may happen:
- Highlight the Importance of Cybersecurity – Start by explaining why cybersecurity is important and what the potential risks are. Stolen customer or employee data can seriously affect the people involved and put the business at risk.
It is critical that employees can quickly find where to report a security incident. - Teach Effective Password Management – Passwords can make or break a company’s cybersecurity system. Includes guidelines on password requirements. Emphasize to employees that they should not use the same passwords on different sites.
If employees are expected to remember multiple passwords, provide the necessary tools to make it easier. A password manager has significant value. Multi-factor authentication reduces the impact of a compromised password; even if it is the master password for the password manager. - Teach Employees How to Identify Scams – If employees receive an email that looks out of the ordinary, even if it looks like an internal email sent by another employee, they should first check with the sender before opening attachments or clicking the links.
It is best to check with the sender by phone or in person. Whenever possible, go to the company’s website instead of clicking a link in an email. - Apply Updates and Patches – Modern operating systems, antimalware programs, web browsers, and other applications are regularly updated, but not all programs do. When employees install unapproved software, IT may be unaware of vulnerable, unpatched applications on their assets.
Verifying that the operating systems and applications are at the current patch and version levels is the responsibility of the IT department. - Protect Personal Information – Attackers often search for sensitive data such as credit card details, customer names, email addresses, and social security numbers.
When submitting this information outside of the organization, it is important that employees understand that they cannot just email the information. - Lock Computers and Devices – When employees leave their desks, they must lock their screens or log out to prevent any unauthorized access. Employees are responsible for locking their computers.
However, the IT department must configure idle timeouts as failsafe. - Safe Portable Media – Lost or stolen mobile phones pose a significant threat to the owner and their contacts. The use of screen locks for these devices is essential. Storage, such as external MicroSD cards and hard drives in laptops, must be encrypted.
When incorporating portable media such as DVDs, it is important to scan these devices for malware before accessing resources such as work computers and the network. - Report Lost or Stolen Devices – Informs employees that stolen devices can be an entry point for attackers to gain access to sensitive data and that employees should immediately report lost or stolen devices.
Oftentimes, IT can wipe devices remotely, so early discovery can make a difference. - Take an active role – If employees become aware of a mistake, even after it has happened, reporting it to IT means that steps can still be taken to mitigate the damage.
If an employee fears losing their job for reporting a mistake, they are unlikely to do so. Make sure they feel comfortable reporting incidents. - Apply privacy settings – Inform employees that it is highly recommended to apply the maximum privacy settings on their social media accounts such as Facebook and Twitter.
Ask them to make sure only their contacts can see your personal information, like date of birth, and location. - Licensed Software Downloads – Employees often download and install software intended to make their job easier, such as a PDF viewer that is lightweight and easier to use than an internal PDF viewer. While this solves a problem for them right away, it can open a business at considerable risk.
Third-party applications are one of the most common sources of data breach and disruption. Employees should be instructed to only use authorized software packages. - Document Management – Today’s documents can include a wealth of personally identifiable information, sensitive data, and intellectual property.
Employees must understand how to manage their documents, including how to share them securely. They need to be able to identify issues that may indicate something is wrong.