Cyber security training is growing in importance. Imagine if your company was compromised and every employee’s financial and personal data was leaked. Can you imagine the consequences? Will your clients or stakeholders still have confidence in your business if that happens?
Businesses today rely heavily on sophisticated technology and data. Unfortunately, cyber attacks have also grown in sophistication. The truth is that no data is 100% safe. Your employees are likely unaware of how to spot a cyber attack. According to a Verizon report, 32% of successful breaches involved phishing.
Today’s cyber criminals are incredibly smooth with their attacks. If your organization does not have a security awareness program, it is exposing itself to risk. Therefore, it is important to train your employees regularly on cyber security and how they can act as a line of defense against attacks.
Here are five reasons why you should train your employees on cyber security more often.
5 Reasons Why Your Employees Need Cyber Security Awareness Training
1. Remote Work Has Caused Cyber Attacks to Increase in Number
Over 70% of full-time workers worked from home at the peak of the pandemic. Several businesses needed to transition to a mostly remote workforce. Sadly, a lot of companies were unprepared for such change as only 3.6% of the U.S. workforce worked remotely before the pandemic. Even that meager percentage mostly worked part-time.
Hackers are taking advantage of the increase in remote work to prey on unwitting and unprotected devices and gain access to company networks. They target common services like unpatched Windows machines, unprotected home networks and VPNs (virtual private network) to threaten individuals and businesses alike.
2. Create a More Cyber-Aware Workplace
The holy grail of cyber security cameras (especially for companies) has always been a cyber-resilient work environment. However, such an environment can seem out of reach and nearly impossible to achieve.
Many employees are still unaware of the risk of sharing their passwords in the workplace. They are also ignorant of some basic cyber security protocols. For a healthy, safe and secure cyber environment, these basic practices will need to be prioritized and enforced through regular cyber security training.
Employees will gain the necessary knowledge through regular training and also understand the importance of workplace cyber security. They will also be informed of the consequences of ignoring them.
3. Reduces Breaches Caused by Human Errors
Even after spending millions on the latest security software, machine learning and advanced threat intelligence, all it will take to breach a company is one employee falling for a phishing email. Therefore, it is important to train your employees on how to spot and respond to common cyber attacks.
With a single data breach, you could lose the trust of your customers. Your customers want to be sure that their data is safe with you. Any breach of your network puts their data at risk. Hence, training your employees on cyber security helps reduce the chances of an attack due to human error.
4. Increases Productivity and Lowers Costs
Did you know that regular cyber security awareness training can save your business money? That’s right! The money that would otherwise be lost to phishing or other cyber threats would be saved.
Data breaches are not only damaging. They are also expensive for any company and can cost your company staggering sums reaching millions of dollars. Most small-scale businesses that have fallen victim to cyber-attacks end up folding up less than a year later because they have lost a significant chunk of their working capital. Apart from the loss of capital, your business may suffer other losses:
- Lawsuits
- Lost clients
- Damage to your company’s reputation
- Compromised sensitive systems and information
- IP (intellectual property) cyber theft.
5. Improves Employee Confidence
With the increasing number of data breaches, many workers are worried that they will one day end up getting fooled by a phishing email. While it may sound simple to say, cyber security attacks aren’t as easy to spot as before. Attacks are more sophisticated and hackers use very authentic-looking decoys like company logos and employee signatures that will deceive most people. Regular training that emphasizes cybersecurity as a priority for the company and gives your employees the resources and tools they need will enable them to find it easier to spot these phishing attacks. This will help improve job satisfaction, reduce anxiety and make them feel better overall.
Conclusion
We live in a very interconnected world. Almost everyone is online and uses technology in one form or another which has made it easier for cybercriminals to find easy targets. Companies can learn how to protect themselves from rising cybercrime threats by implementing proper cyber security training and protection strategies. Sound Computers can update your employees on the latest cyber security tactics.
Call us at (860) 577-8060 now or schedule a consultation via our contact form.