Cybercriminals are becoming incredibly skilled at hacking data and manipulating information. Thus, organizations must also prioritize information and enforce security awareness training for team members.
With the increase in cyberattacks, implementing security awareness training may look complex, especially for organizations that have never employed it.
The employees in your organization are at an increased risk of manipulation by phishing scammers. Security awareness training is essential for your team. It helps them get a grasp of the organization’s policies and procedures and learn how to avoid falling victim to phishing.
Interestingly, with security awareness practices, you are equipping them with the power to defend themselves and the organization from threats. In this way, your team members will not only learn to become efficient computer users but also protect the organization’s resources.
Even though there is no one-size-fits-all security awareness training, there are still best practices that can protect your organization.
Below, we’ll discuss the best practices that will keep your organization better secured from cyber threats.
7 Best Security Awareness Training Practices For Employees
1. It should involve everyone: Security awareness training should be compulsory for everyone regardless of level. This includes senior-level management and low-level employees. An ideal way to create organizational culture is an integrated strategy. This strategy enhances effective decision-making and active participation of all employees.
2. Regular training: There are tendencies that employees will forget training programs. For this purpose, you may decide to organize training programs for your team members either monthly or quarterly. However, this training should be conducted regularly to teach your employees new strategies to defend the organization from risk.
3. Training should address multiple topics: You do not have to limit your employees’ knowledge. The team members must learn fundamental issues such as spear phishing, social engineering, and password security.
4. Supervise them after training: It is erroneous to assume that your employees have understood all that you taught them. Like humans, they may forget salient parts of the information. As such, you must test them after each training. It is a great way to determine the efficiency of the activity. For example, you can examine employees by giving them phishing exercises. Any employee who fails should be given additional training to address the inadequacies inherent in the test. When you monitor employees’ drills, you will figure out if their performances are improving or not.
5. Communication: This is one security awareness practice that is fundamental. Senior-level management must make communication a priority. Communicating the importance of the security awareness training will arouse your employees’ interest. It would be best if you informed employees about security threats and how to defend the organization. Employees will become part of the process when they understand what’s going on and their roles in the situation.
6. Consider gamification: If your organization’s culture permits, insert gamification. The use of games will trigger the active participation of your employees. While this is a fun-loving activity, it is an excellent way to get your employees to pay attention. As a reward system, the use of games can also reinforce learning.
7. Concentrate on teamwork instead of punishment: There will always be mistakes in the training course. But, this should not get the better part of you. Employing an approach that will make your employees share information is the best. If your employees worry that you will blame them for mistakes or errors, they will be unwilling to participate in the program wholly.
Advantages of Security Awareness Training
- It minimizes blunders: Security Awareness Training helps to reduce the mistakes that employees cause due to negligence. Most errors result in losses for organizations.
- The training increases cybersecurity: This training helps employees identify and monitor all forms of malicious activities in the organization. The practices in the training course help the employees avoid situations that will put the organization in a vulnerable position.
- It improves employee morale: Many employees do not know what security awareness entails. It explains why they quickly fall victim to sophisticated emails that can affect the organization’s reputation. This training will enhance the job satisfaction of the employee.
- The training will help you find peace: As an employer, you will not have peace if you are uncertain of the actions of your employees. But, having security awareness training for your employees will give you peace and confidence in your team members’ ability.
Get Help With Your Security Awareness Training
Suppose you don’t provide your employees with the necessary information about how they should respond to cyberattacks and threats. In that case, you must get ready to take responsibility for issues that arise from leaving this large vulnerability in your IT security strategy.
PartnerIT provides security awareness training to organizations. Get the best security awareness practices for your employees here.
