Cybersecurity Awareness: Know How It Is Important For All
- 24/01/2022
- Deep Shukla
Updated on: 16/02/2023
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The last two years have been littered with unforeseen circumstances. Often these events bring unfortunate situations for the greatest of the greatest organizations all over the world. For promoting the perpetual productivity, businesses have been forced to switch to remote working. Owing to this new and vulnerable working model, the hackers have been tirelessly attacking the unsuspecting employees with a wide variety of the bombshells. Cyber attacks are increasingly common so on this International Day of Education, we would like to take the initiative of educating people on cybersecurity awareness.
What we could see in the Covid-19 pandemic is that the number of the cyber attacks have skyrocketed up to 600%. The hackers have been successful on this thing only by following the process of deception via the phishing mails. The hackers have subsequently posed as the prominent members of the Center for Disease Control And Prevention (CDC) or the World Health Organization or WHO and sent countless emails luring a huge number of the victims.
Nevertheless, such catastrophes have existed from years back. It is just that the issue has only been amplified through the instance of pandemic. This seeks for the need of strong Cybersecurity Awareness training programs in the enterprises for protecting the post-pandemic networks against cybercrime.
Table of Contents
What Do You Mean By Cybersecurity Awareness?
Cybersecurity Awareness includes being mindful of the day to day cybersecurity situations. If one is aware of the perils of browsing the web, checking email and interacting online, it can be stated that the person is possessing Cybersecurity Awareness or is aware of the various cyber pitfalls. It is the responsibility of the business leaders to ensure that everyone considers cybersecurity to be a crucial part of their role.
That said, it does not mean that all the employees will have to possess sound knowledge of all the technical terms such as DNS cache poisoning or SPR records. But it is beneficial to empower all the employees with the information that is relevant to their role that further helps them to stay protected when they are online both at work and at their respective residences. The best way to prepare the right people for the right cybersecurity threats is role based training for both the technical and non-technical staff.
Cybersecurity Awareness might also mean something a bit different from your general workforce that it refers to the technical teams. Your IT team needs to know about data management, the regulations and permissions. However, this is not necessary for the rest of the teams. But, if they could be knowledgeable about all of these then nothing is better than this. Keeping that aside, it is vital for building a cybersecurity program that delivers the appropriate training to each team and motivates the lasting behavior change.
What Makes Cybersecurity Awareness Important?
Alike to the safety incidents, the Cybersecurity Awareness challenge is that the cybersecurity incidents might also come with a hefty price tag. If you are struggling with allocation of budget to the cybersecurity training, talent or tools, you need to think about it via the lens of risk management. As the number of the cyberattacks are rising every year, the risk of keeping your employees unaware of the Cybersecurity Awareness will continue to grow and speed up.
These email tracks mostly always involve some kind of phishing. Phishing refers to the fraudulent practice of sending the emails posing as a legit source for compelling the victims to reveal their sensitive information like the credit card numbers and the passwords. You might have at some point seen a phishing email where you are offered a free TV or you are asked to change your password. If you have an active email spam filter, it will catch many of such emails. Occasionally, some will make it through to your inbox.
It is not to be considered that phishing is a pretty simple attack but a Google search away. Anyone who possesses the knowledge of accessing the dark internet called the darknet or the dark web, can buy a phishing kit in the similar way you will buy a book from any online store. Your employees are likely to encounter a cyber incident and you would also want them to be prepared for responding accordingly and reporting threats to the security or IT team. Fortunately, the Cybersecurity Awareness training will be an effective defense against the phishing attacks.
Defending against the social engineering attacks and the phishing attacks finally comes down to knowing what you might go through in the near future. Cyber threats can come in a myriad of forms. However, the most common ones are the phishing emails that ask you for your password, username, and all other personally identifiable information or PII. A good practice is to possess a healthy skepticism whenever an email seeks to know your personal information. This is especially when the sender is unknown.
By this, you might find this to be a daunting task for the companies even if it is a big firm. This would also involve a lot of expenses but this is beneficial for the companies as otherwise the companies have to bear even heavier losses. As per IBM, the average cost of a data breach a year is somewhere around $5 million. In the last year, nearly 38% of the companies had lost their businesses owing to the result of a breach and that has accounted for more than half of the total financial losses.
By training your workforce in identifying these attacks, you can also significantly reduce the risk of a security breach or incident. This can serve as an important difference between an infectious and expensive ransomware and a message to your IT department that reads, “This email looks suspicious and thus I did not open it.”
Best Methods To Deliver Cybersecurity Awareness Training
Here are the three best methods of Cybersecurity Awareness training that can potentially revamp your organization. You can consider this segment as the most important cyber security awareness tips that you need to follow in order to keep your company and employees safe.
Video Sessions: Basic To Advanced
It serves as the fundamental right of any individual for receiving training that interests them. The traditional classroom training no longer works and bears a low probability of effectiveness.
On the contrary, the visually enriched training offers the employees the intensity of being in the situations that are described rather than reading the situations. This permits the employees to absorb all the details very effectively and then apply the lessons that are learnt in everyday life. These programs are considered to be very scalable and much more cost effective than the traditional form of the cybersecurity training method. It also permits the learners to learn on the go offering them the liberty to learn from anywhere and anytime.
Customized Interactive Applications
The interactivities are pretty essential for the retention of memory. It also tests the knowledge of a learner from material. One can solely succeed in the stated interactivities if they have properly understood the basics of the provided materials. In turn, this will permit them to be even more confident and master the appropriate responses to a cyberattack. The best method to develop interactive applications is by including the quizzes into the program. The quizzes and the Cybersecurity Awareness resources can be added at the end of each training module or at the end of the complete CyberSec training program.
Gamification
This is often perceived as “immature”. This is mostly believed to be for the young crowd. However, there is a reason behind the brightest of the individuals are people that interact with the games challenging their methodologies in executing a thought. In security awareness training, gamification can be thrilling. It is groundbreaking, eye-catching and mostly life-changing. Games possess the ability to teach real life situations much better than the original classroom learning. Thus, this contributes to a long lasting experience to the employees.
How To Avoid Disastrous Unforeseen Cybersecurity Events With Effective Training?
It is a fact that the cyberattacks are inevitable yet they are preventable. The black hat hackers possess the capabilities and resources to exploit the vulnerabilities and penetrate the secured systems. The sole way around this security challenge is to first strengthen the weakest link. You must start with educating your employees, most importantly the remote workers through the Cybersecurity Awareness program. You need to build a risk-aware workspace for an even more secure tomorrow by enforcing the Cybersecurity Awareness training on a frequent basis.