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How To Create Effective CyberSecurity Training For Your Employees?

Written by Keith Coppersmith Dec 11, 2020 · 3 min read

Cybersecurity awareness is vital for any company that operates online these days. Although many companies implement proper cybersecurity measures to defend themselves against online attacks, the majority of these companies still become victims of such attacks sooner or later. So, there will always be a need for CyberSecurity Training for your employees.

So, what’s the real issue? Every company has a weak spot, and that is usually their employees. Only one of the employees needs to make a mistake, and a data breach could happen as a result.

Can you blame them? Of course, not. It is not in a regular employee’s job description to know about cybersecurity or to be an expert on the subject. 

Those requirements are reserved for special positions and departments. That said, the best thing you can do to prevent cyber attacks without hiring only cyber-security-trained employees is to educate them yourself. With that in mind, here is how to create effective cybersecurity training for your employees.

Include training in the onboarding process

As you may already know, an onboarding process means welcoming new employees and helping them adjust to the company’s culture, workplace, and work conditions. This is an ideal moment to introduce proper cybersecurity training.

You can educate new recruits on how to spot potential scam attempts and data breaches, as well as how to respond in such situations. Of course, there are other things you need to train new employees about, but if you are well-organized, you’ll find the time to include cybersecurity training as well. 

Teach them about passwords

Passwords are of vital importance when it comes to preventing potential cyber-attacks. It is no secret that employees don’t bother too much with passwords at work. They’ll choose something simple and easy to remember.

However, weak passwords are basically an invitation to a hacker to come and breach your network. That’s why it’s crucial that you educate your employees about the importance of using strong passwords. Here are a few things your employees should know:

• Strong passwords are between 12 and 20 characters long.
• They must contain upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and symbols.
• The more complex the password is, the more difficult it is to crack it.
• Never include personal information in your password.
• Never use the same password more than once or for multiple accounts.
• Don’t save your password in digital format; write it down on a piece of paper, instead.

When employees use weak passwords, especially for business accounts, it becomes so much easier for hackers to exploit this weakness and gain a backdoor entrance to your company’s network.

Fake a cyber attack

One of the best ways to train employees about cybersecurity is to perform a “fake†cyber attack. Companies do this all the time via penetration testing to determine potential weaknesses in their security measures but never for the purpose of training employees.

If you do this, you can determine how employees will respond and whether or not they need additional training or education. It’s a good idea for companies to have reliable enterprise firewall protection. That way, when you fake a cyber attack, you can show employees how the system reacts. 

This will help them understand when the system is warning them about potential threats and they’ll be able to act accordingly instead of ignoring the warning. The purpose of this training is to encourage your employees to develop healthy cybersecurity habits that will allow them to avoid potential threats instead of falling victim to online scams.

Teach them how to identify potential scams

The peculiar thing about cyber attacks is that the majority of them rely on human error. A hacker sets a trap for the unwary and waits for them to fall into the trap. The most common ways hackers do this is through phishing and social engineering scams. Therefore, teach employees how to spot such traps so that they can avoid them. Here are a few pointers you should give to your employees:

• Check the email address of the sender if you suspect anything suspicious, such as an urgent and unusual request.
• Check the links to determine if they lead to where they say they lead.
• Train employees to scan email attachments before opening them.
• Train employees to call technical support if they are uncertain about the email.
• Teach them to never provide login credentials if asked to do so in an email.

It’s better to be safe than sorry so it’s vital that your employees understand that it’s better to check and double-check everything before they proceed. That way, you can rest assured that your employees won’ easily fall for an online scam and, therefore, potentially compromise your entire network.

Cybersecurity is not something that should be neglected or ignored. Many companies never actually recover from a successful data breach, which is why it is of vital importance to prevent such attacks in the first place. If your employees are your weakest link, then make sure you train them properly so you can eliminate a potential weakness in your company’s network.

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