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What is Cybersecurity Awareness Training for Employees?
Cybersecurity training is a strategic security approach undertaken by chief-level executives, CISOs, and security professionals to make the company’s employees aware of cybercrimes and lower the risk of data theft and loss.
Cybercrime costs are estimated to hit $10.5 trillion annually by 2025, increasing the need for enhanced cybersecurity measures (Cybersecurity Ventures).
The complete employee training is designed to make employees understand their role in managing security breaches, theft, cybercrime, and more. Via practical training, employees learn about cyber hygiene and how to identify, stay away from, and report malicious activity.
Topics of Cybersecurity Training for Employees
The training topics must be included depending on the company’s sector. Some of the issues, but not limited to those mentioned, are:
- Phishing Awareness
Phishing is the most common high-risk type of cyber threat. The threat is used to rob confidential information, steal money directly, or compromise the systems in the company. The employees in the organization should know how to identify such threats, what to do, and how to report them correctly, i.e., without compromising the organization’s safety.
Related: Guide on Protection from Phishing Attacks For 2024 & Beyond
- Password Security
The simplest yet the most ignored security measure is not changing your password often or using similar passwords for different platforms. It’s essential to implement unique passwords to reduce the risk. The company should also warn and inform employees to implement multi-factor authentication. So that even if cybercriminals get access to your password, there will be an additional layer of security.
- Security for Remote Workers
In 2020, remote work became the new norm in society, and since then, companies have been encouraging hybrid or remote working systems for employees at different levels and departments.
In remote work, the average cost per breach is $173,074 or higher, underscoring the cybersecurity challenges in the evolving work landscape (IBM)
Employees must be trained on how to protect their devices, select end-to-end encryption communication to share sensitive data, avoid public Wi-Fi, back up data, and more to ensure the smooth working of the system without any cyber threat.
In this technologically dependent world, the thin line between personal and work devices no longer exists. Taking advantage of this factor, cybercriminals create and send deceptive messages to get personal information or rob money from bank accounts.
Taking it one step further, theft actors have started mimicking human interaction to fool other employees and perform financial fraud. Making company employees aware of these new and upcoming forms of social engineering is critical to avoid falling for such scams.
Now, depending upon the nature of the organization and its operation, the company can introduce more topics in cybersecurity awareness training for employees, like web 3.0, blockchain training, credit card handling with security, AI security training, and so on.
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Importance of Cybersecurity Awareness Training for Employees
- Low to No Security Breaches
The main aim of organizing cybersecurity awareness training is to prevent the company’s employees from falling for cyber threats. With the proper training, employees will learn the skill of defending against such attacks, leading to a reduction in data breaches and theft.
- Saves Cost
The training of employees might cost organizations money in the beginning, but it’ll also lead to saving money in the long term. Data breaches not only cause financial loss to organizations but also affect a company’s brand reputation and often lead to legal consequences.
Theft of data reduces consumer’s trust, affecting the brand’s core. By investing in a training program for employees, brands indeed save a fortune in the future.
- Improved Report of Threats
Employees who are trained against cyber threats know how to detect and systematically report any malicious activity. This reporting leads to timely and swift actions, leading to low or no adverse effects on the company’s data or systems.
- Builds Consumer Trust
Today, the general public is aware of cyber threats targeting organizations to steal public data. Hence, consumers are very cautious of brands they are willing to trust. By showcasing your commitment to training employees and protecting the data, your brand can build and gain the trust of your target audience.
Knowing everything about the cyber security training program is one thing, and implementing the same is another. If you need clarification about, how do I train my employees for cybersecurity, you are about to get your answer.
How Can Threatcop Help?
By now, organizations are sure of their need for security awareness training for employees, but these organizations need access to tools and training platforms. That’s when Threatcop Security Awareness Training (TSAT) comes to their aid. With an advanced learning management system and simulation features, the TSAT tool is the best option for companies.
Here are the critical elements of training included in the TSAT tool:
- Engaging, interactive, and enjoyable knowledge sessions to keep the employees interested in learning. Get access to 2000+ videos, quizzes, and newsletters for learning purposes.
- Cyber-attack simulation is used to check employees’ learning levels—realistic attack campaigns for phishing, vishing, and more cyber threats.
- Freedom to customize templates according to your organization’s work to create a super realistic campaign.
- Organizing multiple assessments after learning sessions to measure the success of such sessions practically.
Take a Step Towards Cybersecurity
Dealing with a fraudulent email or message after receiving and engaging with it is working to fight against cyber threats. However, implementing cybersecurity awareness training for employees is the perfect step to mitigate the risk in advance.
Educating and training employees about types of cyber-attacks will be vigilant to avoid them.
FAQs
Q1. How to train employees in cybersecurity?
Ans. There are multiple ways to train employees:
1. Create a strict cyber security policy
2. Make your employees utterly aware of current cyber threats
3. Ensure all the mandatory security protocols are followed in the company
4. Take aid of training tools from reliable platforms like Threatcop
Q2. What should be included in cyber awareness training?
Ans. The topics for cyber awareness are relatively broad; one can include them according to one’s requirements. Some of the critical aspects are phishing awareness, social engineering defence, email security, information on malware, ransomware, cloud security, and so on.
Related: Email Security: Key Strategies Against Phishing, BEC, and Fraud
Q3. How effective is cyber security awareness training?
Ans. This training, when done right, reduces data breaches and financial loss. Employees also learn how to identify such fraudulent messages and report them.
80% of organizations said they plan to increase their spending on information security in 2024. (Gartner)
Q4. How often is cyber awareness training required?
Ans. According to security experts, cybersecurity awareness training in the company is required every four to six months. Hence, the frequency is set to two to four times a year.
Technical Content Writer at Threatcop
Ritu Yadav is a seasoned Technical Content Writer at Threatcop, leveraging her extensive experience as a former journalist with leading media organizations. Her expertise bridges the worlds of in-depth research on cybersecurity, delivering informative and engaging content.
