When assessing and planning a cybersecurity strategy, many companies focus on the software and hardware aspects of their defenses, but not so much on the human element.
Each area of your IT security safeguards is important, this includes firewalls, antivirus software, ransomware defenses, etc. This also includes your employees, which are often on the front line of phishing attacks.
Phishing attacks are the number #1 security concern of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), with 74% of them saying they are most concerned about phishing over other forms of attack.
Their top five list of threat concerns are:
- Phishing attacks (74%)
- Malware, other than ransomware (68%)
- Breach of sensitive data (68%)
- Ransomware attacks (67%)
- CEO fraud/Business email compromise (63%)
And their fears are well-founded. Phishing is involved in 90% of breaches and other IT security incidents.
What SMBs are Doing Wrong With Employee Training
Phishing is directly targeted at people. It has continued to be a successful delivery method for scams and attacks of all types because humans can be fooled into making mistakes.
One clever fake email using email spoofing to mask the real sender’s address can cause an employee to use a malicious login form to your web server, facilitating a web server attack.
A visit to an innocent-looking (but fake) shipping tracking link, can cause ransomware to be unleashed throughout a business network, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses.
Some of the key things that SMBs are doing wrong when it comes to their employee security awareness training are:
- They don’t train enough (once a year is not enough).
- They don’t use automated or engaging forms of training (e.g., videos).
- They don’t use simulated phishing attacks to test team capabilities.
- They don’t budget enough time and money towards keeping employees trained.
Reasons to Make Employee Cybersecurity Awareness Training a Priority
You Significantly Reduce Your Risk
Well-trained employees are one of your best defense strategies against all types of cyberattacks. If employees are receiving training regularly, then they remain on continuous alert for any suspicious emails and can more easily spot a fake and warn everyone else in the organization.
When you improve employee IT security behaviors, you can reduce your risk of a security breach by 45% to 70%.
Data Breaches Are More Expensive Than Training Investment
Some small business owners put employee training low on the priority list because they have to watch what they spend. They see it as a lower priority if they have other cybersecurity safeguards in place.
But all it takes is a clever email disguised as something like a OneDrive sharing link for an employee to be fooled by a spoofed login page and leave your cloud storage and data completely exposed.
Once a hacker breaches an on-premises or cloud system they can:
- Release ransomware or other malware
- Plant spyware and silently steal confidential company information
- Take over an account and use it to send spam and phishing
- Cripple a company’s systems and cause costly downtime
Between 2019 and 2020, the cost of a ransomware attack increased by 2.7 times to $312,493 per incident.
The investment in ongoing cybersecurity training is just a “drop in the bucket” compared to the costs of falling victim to an attack.
You Build a Culture of Security
When you conduct security awareness training once a year, that signals to employees that it’s not a high priority for your company. During the other 11 months of the year, they can easily forget what they’ve learned. This means that with each annual training, you’re simply reminding them of what you told them last year, but there’s no real progress or sustained behavior change as a result.
When you train regularly through several touchpoints happening each week and month, you build a culture of security. Employees know that cybersecurity is important to their organization, and they adopt better cyber hygiene habits, which leads to a reduced risk of a costly incident.
Some of the ways you can incorporate different touchpoints into your awareness training are:
- Short 1-subject videos
- Webinars on recent phishing threats
- Interactive quizzes that are taken online
- Long-form in-person training to cover topics like data security compliance
- Cybersecurity highlights in a company newsletter
- IT security posters and infographics
- Automated training that serves different topics regularly in an engaging way
Phishing Attacks Are Getting More Sophisticated
There used to be a time when phishing was easier to spot due to misspelled words, grammatical errors, and blurry images. But phishing attacks have evolved, and the emails often look identical to the ones you’d receive from a legitimate company.
The use of fake domains as the sender and elaborate phishing sites that spoof real websites, are all reasons you need to continuously train your employees to show them what they need to watch out for. With today’s attacks, even the savviest people have to do a double-take and employ tactics like hovering over links to reveal a URL to identify a phishing trap.
Get Automated Employee Security Awareness Training
Leverage IT Group can help your DFW area business improve your human cyber defenses. Our 360 Degree Threat Protection package covers you in multiple ways, including automated employee security awareness training to keep your team on their toes.
Contact us today to schedule a free consultation. Call (469) 458-0559 or reach us online.