Cybersecurity Training: Upskilling Employees Is A Must
The past year has changed the dynamics of businesses around the globe. Most industries are now modifying their business models. With businesses widely relying on the internet and digital marketing for their execution post-pandemic, there are wider risks attached to it as well. The Coronavirus pandemic has led to many changes in how businesses run, and experts are working towards modifying execution to cater to the changing needs. With this drastic transition to digitization, organizations must carefully work towards data protection and cybersecurity.
As per recent trends, there is a huge increase in security disruption and cyber attacks in the year 2020 and 2021. Devices like mobile and IoT devices are becoming the easiest target for a data breach.
Why Is Information Security Important?
With people depending largely on the internet for their daily life chores, cyber security threats put them in a vulnerable position. Cyber criminals are working endlessly to hack systems, steal useful information and get into private data. Attacks like distributed denial of service (DDoS) affect major established platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. This indicates that even the largest and secure platforms are not protected from cyber attacks.
As reported by IBM, the cost of a data breach is around $4 million but still not more than 29% of the businesses invest in a cyber security team.
Causes of Data Breach
A data breach can occur through various leaks and loopholes. Scammers are trying to break into systems through phishing or malware infection. Organizations must be careful of the potential risks and causes of a data breach. The following are just a few causes of a data breach:
- Weak passwords & stolen credentials
- Application Vulnerabilities
- Malware
- Social Engineering
- Insider Threats
- Improper Configuration & User Error
The Numbers
In the past few years, cyber crime has escalated drastically and the costs incurred due to the losses have rocketed. These concerns are alarming for businesses around the globe. Here are a few important numbers:
- The cost spent on cybersecurity is going to reach $133 billion by 2022 according to Gartner.
- Cybersecurity risks are increasing, according to 68% of business leaders.
- Data breaches exposed more than 4 billion records in the first half of 2019 alone.
- Researchers at the University of Maryland have found hackers attack every 39 seconds, on average 2,244 times a day.
- A few common cyber-attacks include:
- Malware attack
- DoS and DDoS
- MitM
- Phishing or spear-phishing attacks
- Drive-by attack
- Password leak attack
- SQL injection attack
- XSS
Training & Upskilling Employees
Let's have a look at why it is important to train your employees regarding cybersecurity and data protection and how you should do it:
Cybersecurity Compliance Is About Teamwork: Think of any sport like soccer or baseball, or cricket; it requires each player to be in-synch and work together as one body. The same goes for cybersecurity. Each individual of your organization has to be vigilant and well aware of the cybersecurity protocols. You must not leave any loopholes for the cyber attackers to find a way in your organization. You can develop an efficient IT and security department; however, one mistake at the wrong time can result in a dangerous position for your company.
How to Approach Cybersecurity Training: There are multiple ways through which cyber criminals fool employees in an organization. These include including phishing emails and impersonations, among others, which is why you must train the employees of all the potential scams. Telling employees of their individual responsibilities will make a visible difference. Most individuals appreciate when they're asked to attend training as employees are the weakest links to cyber-attacks. You must encourage the benefits of taking these training so employees show more interest in how they can be vigilant about data protection.
Make the Importance of Such Training Clear: The organizations must hold seminars and informative sessions that are critical to data protection, so time and again, employees are informed of why it is important for them to be cautious.
By telling them the potential risks attached to cyber-attacks, you can mitigate a lot of risks. Appropriate security steps must be taught to the employees working in an office. These seminars will help you create a strong internal policy of no data leakage and help the system protect data in the long term.
Raise Awareness: Employees sometimes do not realize that there is a large risk if you use your personal accounts on your work systems or vice versa. Similarly, sharing your work USB with someone outside the office is not safe either.
There are several small and large mistakes that people tend to make, which can be crucial to your organization's security. The earlier and frequent you raise awareness, the better it is for your company's security.
Whenever you recruit a new employee, they must be trained about your company policies regarding data security. A lot of organizations also make employees sign a contract for data protection, which is essential to keep the information secured.
Everyone on the Team Must Be Included: Whether it is a sales team or marketing team, everyone must be included in training and upskilling employees regarding the threats of cyber-attacks. Training only a limited number of people won't help you in the long term as it will create loopholes.
Make cybersecurity a top priority in your organization so that each employee is careful.
Conclusion
The awareness of cybersecurity and the risk associated is important more than anything in today's age and time. We are highly dependent on the virtual space for almost everything. Post-pandemic things have greatly changed, and the world is making use of technology as much as it can.
Technology has its pros and cons and the greatest con of technology is the vulnerability to protect one's useful data. Even after knowing the potential risks attached, some organizations report they plan to downsize their cybersecurity training this year. Organizations need to be vigilant in raising awareness and train employees in advanced ways to protect their data.
Myrah Abrar is a computer science graduate with a passion for web development and digital marketing. She is a technical writer for Dynamologic Solutions. Image: Unsplash
You Might Also Read:
