“Security awareness training is a form of education that seeks to equip members of an organization with the information they need to protect themselves and their organization’s assets from loss or harm. For the purposes of any security awareness training discussion, members of an organization include employees, temps, contractors, and anybody else who performs authorized functions online for an organization.
Organizations that must comply with industry regulations or frameworks such as PCI (Payment Card Initiative), HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996), the Sarbanes-Oxley reporting requirements, NIST or ISO usually deliver security awareness training to all employees once or perhaps twice a year.
And even though it may not be required by Small and Medium Enterprises for compliance reasons, they can also benefit from training their employees to avoid cyberheists through phishing attacks, account takeovers, or other well-known means that cybercriminals use to misappropriate company funds.” – KnowBe4
Research suggests that human error is involved in more than 90% of security breaches. Security awareness training helps to minimize risk thus preventing the loss of PII, IP, money or brand reputation. An effective awareness training program addresses the cybersecurity mistakes that employees may make when using email, the web and in the physical world such as tailgaiting or improper document disposal.
Bad actors often use times of fear, uncertainty, and doubt to further their efforts to compromise businesses and individuals for nefarious reasons. Cybercriminals sent out 1.5 million COVID-19 related phishing emails per day during the peak of the pandemic. Now more than ever with many new remote workers, it is important to have employee security awareness training and protect your business.
In 2019, Verizon reported that 32% of all cybercrimes started with a phishing scheme. This means that no matter how sophisticated your organization’s security infrastructure is, your employees are still a vulnerability. Security training for employees can help to close up that gap and make your employees your biggest strength, which is why it is so important to incorporate training into your security program.
Furthermore, the average cost of a breach in 2020 is $9.48 million, in the USA alone, whereas security awareness training costs a fraction of that. Educating your employees will not only reduce your risk but could save you money in the long run.
Are you and your employees trained on what a phishing email looks like? Do you have in-house trainings at least annually from your current provider? Can you afford to have your infrastructure breached from a threat actor due to human error?
Contact Us today so we can talk about your Cybersecurity and IT solution needs for your organization!