Cyberattacks are becoming a constant threat for businesses today. Phishing emails, malware downloads, social engineering, and credential stuffing are just a few different types of cyberattack that businesses now combat daily.
Cyberattack awareness, and increasing the knowledge around cybersecurity as a whole, enables your business to increase the levels of mindfulness around the subject, as well as having a safe and secure plan in place for when your organisation faces these kinds of threats.
According to a recent study by IBM, 95% of cybersecurity breaches are associated with human error, and a lack of awareness or knowledge on the topic itself.
Whilst the technology associated with protection, cybersecurity, and IT support has increased as each year passes, hackers and cybercriminals are aware that human error is still an easy point of access to data and systems.
Put simply, cybercriminals know that the effectiveness of cybersecurity systems put in place by businesses, is only as successful as the humans that utilise them.
Poor cyberattack awareness leads to lower levels of cybersecurity. Meanwhile, if your business is filled with staff who are aware, diligent and cyber safe, your organisation will save significant time, money and resources in the long run.
Cyberattack Awareness #1: Get All the Staff Involved
Cybersecurity within a business is not purely a responsibility for those at the top of an organisation chart, nor is it only for those “in the trenches” doing the day-to-day activities.
Whether you are the CEO of a business, a manager, or part of a wider team, staff with access to work systems must ensure they have a certain level of cyberattack awareness. Failure to do so could result in catastrophic results for a business, with short and long-term effects increasing in likelihood of occurring.
To prevent any gaps within a business, ensure that every member of staff is engaging in cyberattack awareness modules. Increasing awareness and adding to the knowledge of staff ensures that your business is best set up for success.
Cyberattack Awareness #2: Make Cybersecurity Training Engaging, not Boring
Whilst making your cyberattack awareness training engaging might seem difficult, due to the nature of the subject, there are certain ways that it can be implemented to actually have your staff feeling engaged.
Using engaging videos with entertaining but insightful content is a great way to ensure that your staff is not just sitting there clicking “next” on content that does not resonate with those viewing.
Interactive content is one of the best ways to have your staff quite literally engaging with the cyberattack awareness training. This not only ensures that your staff is actively watching and listening to the content, but retaining the information also.
Ensuring that your staff are engaged during training sessions, no matter the topic, will lead to increased levels of retention and ability to respond appropriately to potential cybersecurity risks that occur outside of any simulations.
Cyberattack Awareness #3: Communicate Appropriately
Communication, when discussing IT support and cybersecurity, is of utmost importance for your staff. There is a fine line between providing insightful knowledge with extensive information, and offering confusing, technical jargon that goes over people’s heads.
For example, instead of using terminology such as “multi-factor authentication” without context, you can then explain it in much simpler terms.
A simple way to provider more context is to explain that it is an extra layer of security, that requires you to input a code sent to your mobile phone or another device to be able to log in to systems.
Communicating in a way that resonates with your audience, being your staff, is the key to ensuring that your message is better received, and therefore, increasing the chances of putting the logic into effect.
Cyberattack Awareness #4: Utilise Microlearning
Microlearning is an incredibly effective way of providing your staff with required cyberattack awareness and cybersecurity training. Rather than sitting your staff down for hours on end to learn about cybersecurity and general IT support, microlearning should be encouraged.
Microlearning comes with a typical timeframe of between 1 and 15 minutes, taking up as little time as possible for staff, whilst also ensuring that the content accurately provides the business with insightful and useful information.
Microlearning is perfect for cybersecurity awareness, as staff will obtain small pieces of information within each session, allowing the information to be processed, rather than focusing on a large, and wide array of subjects.
Cyberattack Awareness #5: Conduct Phishing Attack Drills
Conducting phishing attack drills is yet another fantastic idea to improve on the cyberattack awareness within a business. It is all well and good to provide training modules, videos, and content around teaching staff about cybersecurity. However practical examples provide that next step that will elevate knowledge levels within an organisation.
Allowing your staff the opportunity to not just see what an actual phishing attack will look like, but also showcase how best to respond or react to it, will provide much more information than a simple video would.
You can provide an example of a phishing attack, which staff can engage with and attempt to decipher on their own. From that, however, it is encouraged to then go deeper into the learning, explaining how these kinds of hacking attempts get created in the first place, what signs may have been missed on the first attempt, and how best to deal with phishing attempts.
Cyberattack Awareness #6: Make Reporting Simple and Encouraged
Another way for staff to increase their cyberattack awareness, and more importantly, their cybersecurity response behaviour, is to have a simple and efficient reporting system in place for users.
Staff need to feel comfortable and confident reporting potentially suspicious behaviour when it comes to a potential cyberattack. Allowing individuals to feel safe and assured knowing they can report suspicious activity free of stress to the correct member of staff, is incredibly important to the overall cyber safety levels of a business.
Simplifying the process is also incredibly important, rather than having staff jumping through hoops and obstacles just to report suspicious behaviour. Having this kind of simplified process allows staff to focus on their work, rather than cyberattack awareness and a disrupted system that does not get acknowledged.
Cyberattack Awareness #7: Cybersecurity at Home
More than ever, with work-from-home capabilities improving and being in place for businesses, cyberattack awareness at home has become of vital importance.
Increased awareness and more robust cybersecurity systems on work devices taken home decreases the chances of successful cyberattacks. Providing additional training modules catered around working from home provides extra support for staff, and knowledge around the work systems.
Furthermore, providing your staff with extra knowledge and support around home devices, even if not used for work, further enhances their level of cyberattack awareness.
Users will certainly want to keep their personal devices safe from hackers, and if given the knowledge to so, they will then most likely transfer this knowledge to company devices. This is because it is now a more seamless activity for staff, and becomes more natural, rather than something they must think about constantly.
Cyberattack Awareness #8: Celebrate Cybersecurity Successes
An action that encourages cyberattack awareness, is to simply celebrate cybersecurity successes within a business. This action of “celebration” is a useful way to both encourage users to continue in a cyber safe manner, but also promotes the wider team to follow in these footsteps.
Celebrating cybersecurity successes can be quite a simple process. Has one of your staff achieved 100% on a phishing drill? Did a staff member report a suspicious email that turned out to be malicious?
These are just a couple examples of how a business can both improve the cyberattack awareness within an organisation, and also encourage proactive cybersecurity practices.
Whilst this is a minor action that can be taken by business owners and leaders within an organisation, it can go a long way to creating a safe, secure cyber savvy workforce.
Cyberattack Awareness #9: Utilise Technology
Technology can be a powerful tool when it comes to increasing cyberattack awareness within a business. Not only can technology help with the awareness for users, but also simply providing more efficient and secure cybersecurity systems for a business and its users.
As mentioned previously, technology can assist with the creation of training modules and activities that provide microlearning practices. As well as this, however, it can be used to schedule and implement automated cyberattack simulations such as phishing attacks to test staff knowledge with a “real world” example.
In terms of utilising technology to increase cyberattack awareness through safe cybersecurity systems and processes, there are a number of options such as:
- Password Managers
- Email Filtering for Spam and Phishing
- Automated Rules – Such as Microsoft’s Sensitivity Labels
- DNS Filtering
Cyberattack Awareness #10: Contact Adept IT Solutions Today
Contacting a Managed Service Provider, such as the team here at Adept IT Solutions, can assist your business for all your managed IT service and cybersecurity needs.
Sick of searching “IT Support near me” and being underwhelmed at the results?
Adept IT Solutions, a leading provider of IT support in Newcastle, Central Coast, Lake Macquarie and Sydney areas, can support your business through all your IT service needs.
Through our extensive list of IT services, we can provide your business with the professional IT support you deserve. To get in touch, contact us at 1300 423 378 (ADEPT) or email us at info@adept-it.com.au.
