In this article, we will discuss how our Salinas business technology support services can help train your workforce with cybersecurity best practices and help them identify potential threats that will compromise your business data.
Your employees are your number one threat
Did you know? 90% of all cyber-attacks are caused by human error.
Which is not surprising as 61% of all employees fail a basic cyber security quiz.
Even with the most advanced security technology in place, your employees will always pose a risk to the security of your data.
It only takes one wrong click on a malicious email or download to enable cybercriminals to infiltrate your systems and launch a cyber-attack.
What kind of attacks are my employees vulnerable to?
Email phishing is an incredibly common and successful attack used by cybercriminals to trick employees into providing them with confidential information.
Typically, cybercriminals will impersonate a legitimate sender and use malicious links, downloads, or forms to gather important information.
A popular form of email phishing is CEO fraud, whereby hackers will mimic the email address of a senior member of staff (e.g. a CEO). They will then email an employee asking for financial or personal information.
For example, a cyber criminal could email a member of the finance department claiming that a bill needs to be paid urgently and provide details of a bank to transfer into. They will often place a sense of urgency on these emails, e.g. saying they need to be paid within the next 30 minutes.
Some of these attacks can be incredibly convincing, whereby hackers mimic legitimate email addresses, footers, and tone of voice. As such, it’s not unlikely that some staff may comply, leading to financial loss and risking an even more detrimental cyber-attack now that scammers have access to your details.
The risk associated with email phishing has also increased over the last year. Now that most people are working remotely, it’s more difficult to consult your colleagues if you’re unsure about the legitimacy of an email. Additionally, cyber criminals are devising more specific, targeted attacks. For example, phishing emails are circulating that impersonate governing bodies like the U.S government, and the World Health Organization, promising people vaccinations in return for personal or financial information.
Essentially, email phishing attacks prey on people’s concerns, vulnerabilities, and willingness to overlook details in favor of ‘getting the job done’. As such, they are often successful and can be extremely dangerous for your business.
What’s the best way to combat phishing attacks? Ensure your team have the knowledge required to easily spot and ignore potentially malicious emails.
What’s the best way to educate your team? Effective cyber security awareness training.
So, what is cyber security awareness training?
Effective cyber security awareness training should educate your staff about security threats without taking time out of their busy days.
At Adaptive, we can quickly and easily roll out cyber security awareness training companywide. Our training consists of regular, concise training videos that cover everything from email phishing to social media scams. Employees are regularly sent informative videos explaining what cyber-attacks are out there and how to mitigate them. After each video they must complete a short quiz to check they understood the content. Because these videos are short and regular, employees are kept up to date with the latest scams without taking time away from their working day.
In our experience, concise, interactive training videos are a lot more effective than entire days dedicated to training employees about cyber security. The likelihood is your staff probably aren’t too interested in the latest cyber security trends and it can be a lot of information to process in one day. After a month or so, it’s likely they will have forgotten everything entirely. Not to mention the fact that the threat landscape fluctuates and evolves so quickly that a few months later, the information they learned on that day may have lost relevance.
On the other hand, regular cyber security awareness training makes being cyber aware quick, constant, and pain-free.
What are security awareness phishing tests?
In addition to interactive training videos, our security training offering also includes simulated phishing tests. This means that all your employees will also be sent spoof phishing emails on a regular basis. This will test their ability to identify and ignore potentially harmful emails in a real-world scenario.
If employees do click on a spoof email, they will be informed and automatically enrolled into additional, relevant training. This will ensure that their knowledge is refreshed and prevent them from making the same mistake again in the future.
Security awareness phishing is particularly effective because it tests employees when they don’t know they’re being tested. You can, therefore, gain an accurate representation into the security awareness of your staff, allowing you to identify weak individuals or departments that could benefit from some extra support.
What are the benefits of cyber security awareness training and phishing?
- Enhances the cyber security awareness of your entire workforce, protecting your business from cyber-attack
- Quick and concise so time isn’t taken away from your employees’ normal working day
- Easy to roll out companywide
- Personable and interactive videos to keep your employees engaged
- Ability to assess your employees’ security awareness in real-life scenarios
What are the next steps?
- If you’re already an Adaptive client, speak to your Business Technology Advisor now about how cyber security awareness training can help enhance the security of your business.
- If you’re new to Adaptive you can contact us today to speak to an expert and find out how security awareness training, or any of our other services, can help your business succeed.
- Or, if you’d like to know more about our other security solutions, click here.