Ways to educate your employees with all the current IT security Necessities

Do you think educating your employees with the necessary IT security requirements can save your business?

IT security education is the number one tool to develop a culture of proper security. For a business to remain secure and sound employees, including the top-level executives to the utmost level, introductory-level jobs, need to buy in the understanding of IT security. 

If you are an employee working on the front line of IT security, you might have framed IT policies for the co-workers. But even with these protections, it is important to stay attentive to safeguard your company’s data and network. 

Does it make an actual difference? Hackers often target large corporations, but they are more attracted to the SMEs. Why? The cybercriminals have explicit knowledge about the fewer controls and budget limitations with the SMEs, which could make it easier for them to infiltrate.

Back in 2016, a survey reported by Poneman that 55% of the businesses with less than 1000 employees experienced a significant outbreak in its IT security. The damage anticipated a heavy loss of nearly $6 trillion by 2021.

Proper training is undoubtedly a top defense against current IT security. IT policy, physical security, firewalls, and other technical precautions are necessary, but teaching employees what to do/ what not to do, lays the groundwork for a secure battlefront to support the underlying security measures.

The importance of IT security training is obvious, but that doesn’t mean that it’s always easy. Too often, real barriers substitute the way of adequately teaching the safety measures which will save millions as cleanup costs. Your company might have the best security software and comprehensive policies, and your action does play a significant part in safeguarding your data. Consider this: A single employee by mistake shares the sensitive information of the company through a smartphone or by clicking a corrupted link leading to the data breach. 

When you have started a IT company, it is smart to understand and learn security best practices. If you educate you and your internal staffs about the small things, it can contribute to IT security, which can go a long way to help and protect your organization.  

Budget complications, time limitations, stubborn company philosophy, or a scarcity of current IT security, corrupt practices seem overwhelming, especially to a SMEs with limited resources. Fortunately, there are good cures to each of those roadblocks which allows the enterprises to understand the current IT requirements. 

Is your employee aware of the current IT necessities?

We are moving from 2020 to 2021, amid the transition, most of the employees working in the industrial sector somehow must have taken up the knowledge of IT security, ransomware and cyberattacks. 

You can further strengthen the knowledge through a good security awareness program supporting the needs of current IT. Before drafting any training, determine what proportion your company is ready for IT threats.

But before proceeding, one needs to gather the baseline, only then you can proceed with advanced training. Most of the enterprises start with the necessary sense, followed by a pre-written test and activities for general information. To add more effectiveness, you can create a real-life situation. For instance, initiating an indoor phishing attack to identify employee’s response. This experiment will provide a summary of how prepared your team is to handle external cyber threats.

Another most viable option is to use quiz or polls to seek out the areas that employees would like to be covered within the security awareness training. 

Threat security awareness programs as a workshop

Once you find out the baseline of your employees, you would want to focus and target the areas of the organization. Moving beyond the quiz creating actual security content suiting the organization structure. For this, you need to work out more on making the training programs effective. You can do this by developing short and focused modules covering the gamut’s security.

Making security training interactive 

The audience hates long lectures. With smartwatches that have a game, gone are the days of an installed speaker playing boring lectures. Learning and sharing information on the training should involve active processes. When employees sit in a training program surrounded by purely informative sessions, they are likely to retain the details.

Developing a security culture 

Acceptable security practices are an old plain habit. Employees, regardless of their position, fill in the workplace with what they practice at home. CISCO too agrees the best way to protect the organization from the threats is to create a culture. Developing a culture does not mean that the employees are aware of the risk but are also capable of spotting one. Your employees may not see the built-in value of security awareness when faced with massive abstracts. When they know the security issues on their daily actions, they are more likely to notice the associated vulnerabilities. With the right strategies and implementation of the approaches, you can take every of the staff to the security channels.

Here are the basics the business can take up as a beginners step to educate their employees to the IT security needs,

• Training on password strengthening

New Avast research reveals that 83% of the Americans use weak passwords which are easier to crack. At the same time, 50% of the connected population use the same password for multiple accounts. 

We need passwords to unlock devices or sign-in to the respective accounts, and work-related application. It is a lot to recollect; numerous people set generic passwords that are quickly unraveled. The only reason why online IT security awareness training should help employees understand how important passwords are.

According to a security study, the commonly used web passwords are “123456” and “password.” Sure, these are easy to remember but are also easy to hack. If you use a simple password across multiple accounts, as reported, 92 per cent of users do that permitting all the data at risk.

Explain that passwords are the primary line of protection to safeguard sensitive information from hackers. Then, show employees the way to set strong passwords that incorporate a mixture of letters, numbers, and symbols.

• Using multi-factor authentication

Multi-factor authentication or two-factor authentication (2FA) sends a code to a person’s phone, email address, or app whenever they are logging in to their corporate servers. The users are only authorized after they enter the code. The two-factor authentication (2FA) makes more challenging for a 3rd party to involve login information and use it.

According to the 2020 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, stolen login credentials are the top tactic used by hackers to achieve data breaches. Secure multi-factor authentication solution because 80% of security breaches involve compromised passwords.

If the individuals receive a code but did not plan to log in, they will know the information immediately about the unauthorized access. This two-factor verification offers more secure security for the system against an unpleasant act. 

• Implementing email, internet, and social media policies

The email and browsing habits of employees can leave the corporation open to malicious software, which attacks company applications and social accounts. It is imperative to train your employees about IT security in your company that comprises policies for authorized email, internet, and social media.

Implement policies on the link categories. Suspicious links from anonymous folks or organizations should be identified as malicious links by your antivirus program. Summaries the principles for internet browsing and social media usage for your employees on organization device. 

• Frequently scan & update PCs

Just having antivirus software on PCs will not help if the workers fail to perform an in-depth scanning of the device or regular updates of software. A similar method holds for operating systems. Operating systems frequently have security protocols on their frequent updates that improve protection system from attacks. Still, you will not cash in those changes if the machines are not updated. 

Inform your employees to scan their devices to prevent software and OS issues. Doing so will make sure the software has information on the recent, current IT threats, which is the means of protecting the pc from the potential hazards. 

• Policy to secure the company data

Every organization has its policies for its IT security. But do not assume that each of the employees is conscious of these policies. Information security training for the new homie should explain the regulatory and legal obligations of IT protection. Then, offer them with current IT courses so that all employees are up for the principles and policies laid for data protection.

• Rewarding the employees

Reward users who find malicious emails and share stories about how they have helped prevent security issues. It sets a direct relation between IT leaders who should also empathize with employees who make mistakes. Many employees send or receive many emails per day, so ask them to avoid one among those situations which are challenging. 

While these training and education tips can help, even within the most advanced and most current education scenarios, there still are a percentage of attacks. But with continuous training programs, one can somewhat minimize the uncertain damage. 

Your employees play a crucial part in operating one of your successful business ventures. An untrained and negligent workplace can put your innovativeness and business IT at a high risk making you lose millions. Therefore, every organization must adopt a worthwhile IT security educational program that ought to include the essential guidelines needed to prevent future IT security incidents.

The organization should also prepare periodic meetings, provide frequent reminders, and train all new buddies on new or ongoing policies. If you are unsure about what should be the beginner’s step to educate your employees, you can always take professional help from NSWIT Support. A single from your end can help your business develop a robust IT security structure, with continuous security programs which allows your business to stay up front on the trending IT security issues.