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Why is security awareness training important?
Security awareness training is a core component of an organization's information security and cybersecurity training. Hackers continuously innovate their attack methods and as a result, preparing your company's most vulnerable asset (your employees) for defence against cyber threats becomes a top priority. Take a look as CYBR answers some of the most common questions about security awareness training, programs and security culture.
What is security awareness training?
Security awareness training is a strategy designed to mitigate human cyber risk. This strategy helps to combat data breaches, identify potential cyber threats, and addresses the mistakes an employee might make while using the web, checking their email, or even within their physical environment.
Why is security awareness training necessary for your employees?
Human error within cybersecurity most often occurs because there is a lack of training. Whether or not your business is large or small, there must be a layered approach to providing a reliable line of defence.
Rather than think of your employees as the "weakest link", security awareness training empowers your staff members to become your first line of defence. Security awareness training enables your employees to learn the right course of action against cyber attacks such as; phishing, social engineering and malware threats. Upon completion of training, employees should be able to make informed decisions about their actions or inactions while safely using the web.
What can happen without security awareness training?
Verizon's 2022 Data Breach Investigation Report found that 82% of cyber security breaches involved the human element; this includes social engineering attacks, errors, and misuse by an employee or someone with network access.
Without security awareness training, employees (including your own) can fall victim to calculated attacks through social engineering, smishing (SMS texts), social media threats, and phishing emails. Cyber criminals often use various methods to gain access to your systems, sensitive data, or money. Common attack vectors even include using malicious links and attachments to gain unauthorised access to a system. Many popular file extensions that seem harmless, such as; word, pdf and excel, can be used by hackers to transmit malware via email.
You can lessen the effects of security threats by educating your employees on cybersecurity essentials. Some relevant topics include; "how to identify and report phishing emails" and "how to protect sensitive data from threats".
Why is security culture important for your security awareness program?
Though human error is unavoidable, your employees can improve their threat detection abilities and strengthen your company's cyber defence through an effective security awareness training program.
Encouraging a culture within your organization where security and training are valued leads to an environment where mistakes are both identified and corrected quickly.
Strong security culture paired with security awareness training mitigates your cyber risk while ensuring that your employees know the best practices in identifying and reporting cyber threats/attacks.
What is an effective security awareness training program?
An effective awareness training program teaches and prepares your employees to detect, report, and avoid even the most current cyber attacks. Training content should be engaging and delivered continuously (but try not to overwhelm your employees with too much information all at once). Security awareness training creates a gap between cyber criminals and potential victims -- this gap is necessary to reduce the potential risks and negative impact on business.
Why choose CYBR for security awareness training?
CYBR offers interactive, bite-sized lessons designed to improve your employees' security culture and habits while reducing cyber risk.
Continuous and gamified security awareness training
CYBR ensures high engagement while training your employees to identify and report phishing, social engineering and the latest cyber threats.
Certify your employees
There are many new requirements for organizations and staff to understand modern security risks. CYBR keeps it exciting to earn certificates that can be shared with the required entities.
Detailed overview of your cyber risk
With CYBR's security awareness platform, you can laser focus on individual employee weaknesses, user behaviour, and reduce your organization's human cyber risk.
Pain-free Administration
CYBR makes it simple and pain-free to onboard, manage, and provide security awareness training to your users within a single platform. Get in touch to begin transforming your employees' human error into a human cyber defence team.
Must-Include Topics For A Security Awareness Training Program
CYBR offers security awareness training on a variety of different topics. Our content library is based on risk-access level, is designed to improve security habits, and is continuously updated with new information on the most current cyber threats.
Phishing Awareness
Password Security
Compliance (GDPR)
Social Engineering
Insider Threats
Physical Security
CEO Fraud/Wire Fraud
Device Security
Network Security
Security Awareness Essentials
Related Security Awareness Training FAQ's
Why should an organization think about cybersecurity?
Cybercrime against organizations has risen steadily over the past decade and as a result organizations should regard cybersecurity as a high-priority item. The latest FBI IC3 report shows that over 6.9 billion USD, was lost in the last year. CYBR makes it simple to manage your cybersecurity awareness training program and have a detailed overview of your human cyber risk.
Why is phishing awareness training important for employees?
Phishing awareness training is important for employees to learn how to identify and report phishing emails and other cyber threats. Over 82% of breaches occurring involve the human factor (this can often involve phishing attacks via email or social engineering). CYBR offers phishing simulations so that your employees can improve their threat detection abilities. Learn about Breach AI
How long does it take to implement a security awareness program?
Implementing a security awareness program can be both a time-consuming and hands-on process. However, this is all dependent on your budget and allocated resources. CYBR simplifies this process with full access to our CYBR security awareness content library and training platform.
How often should my organization provide security awareness training?
Security awareness training sees the best results when training is provided continuously in small digestible amounts. The "once-a-year security awareness program" model is outdated and ineffective for long-term improvements to your organization's security culture. The CYBR platform makes it easy to set up continuous training campaigns; this is also where your admins can monitor and track progress, and see a detailed overview of employees' cyber risk.
How much does security awareness training cost?
Security awareness training costs may vary depending on your organization's unique needs and preferences. On average, the damages to an organization's money and brand reputation after being breached are more costly than the price of security awareness training tools. You can schedule a conversation with CYBR to discuss Security awareness training for your organization.
Co-authored by: Gabriela Webster and Seline Young
Continue reading and discover the new face of scam calls (callback phishing) or test yourself and find out just how easy it is for hackers to guess your password.