Despite the rampant rise of cyber crimes and increasing costs to organisations, many businesses are still questioning whether investing in cyber security training for their employees is the right course of action for them.
The reality is that in 2017 alone cyber crime costs businesses all over the world $600 billion, the equivalent of 0.8% of the global GDP at the time. In the two years since, this number has swiftly risen with cyber attacks now affecting businesses both small and larger each day
With this is mind, let’s take a look at why it is vital that any business owner implements cyber security training in their company. No matter how small or large your organisation is, you’ll find that these considerations will likely apply to you, and demonstrate just how vital cyber security training still is.
In most cases, human error is a key factor in cyber attacks. After all, if you are not aware of what the risks are, how can you guard your organisation against them? For regular employees, cyber security will be far removed from their daily responsibilities, and therefore not be on their list of priorities. This can be dangerous as without proper awareness, employees can easily assume that the responsibility falls on someone else rather than themselves to maintain a certain level of cyber security.
There is also the issue of both employees and employers not being aware of what constitutes a cyber attack. Even worse, most business often don’t know that they have even been a victim of a cyber attack. Again, proper awareness can help mitigate both of these issues.
It is easy to think of cyber security awareness simply in relation to guarding against cyber attacks. However, cyber security also relates to GDPR and remaining compliant with the new requirements.
For businesses operating in the European Union, the implementation of GDPR means that all members of staff must be trained on proper security protocols when it comes to the storage and use of what could be classed as private information.
Although the introduction of this regulation means that organisations must have a data protection officer on board who has in-depth knowledge of the data protection regulation, it doesn’t mean that all other employees are exempt. Everyone in the business should know the proper steps to remaining GPDR compliant as they will all likely have access to sensitive data, and therefore must know how to access it responsibly.
The reality is that cyber crimes are constantly changing with hackers finding new and inventive ways of exploiting inadequately protected systems. Because of this, it doesn’t matter if your company employs cyber security specialists and IT professionals, regular employees must also be provided with ongoing cyber security awareness training.
By ensuring that all employees have a strong foundation of cyber security knowledge, you can ensure that your organisation is protected at all levels. The most common type of cyber attack remains phishing, which will be far more likely to be used to target a regular employee than an expert who would recognise the attack for what it is. Of course, if your employees know how to spot a phishing attack, they know how to avoid becoming the victim of one and putting the entire company server at risk.
