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Why Cybersecurity Awareness Training Should be Prioritized For All Businesses

Cybersecurity awareness training can help prevent one of today’s biggest threats to your business – cyber-attacks. Even if you have the most sophisticated anti-virus, firewall systems and protocols in place, you must still rely on your employees to be a part of your cybersecurity system. That, of course, opens the door to the risk of breaches, because we are all human after all, and mistakes and errors do happen. However, if you spend the time to train your employees on the risks and teach them proper security awareness, your company will be safer in the long run.

The Human Side of Cybersecurity

According to Ironscales 2017 Email Security Report, 95% of successful cyberattacks are the result of a phishing scams. Phishing is defined as the “fraudulent practice of sending emails purporting to be from reputable companies in order to induce individuals to reveal personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers.” Therefore, phishing attacks occur at the human level in your organization, and as phishers get more sophisticated, businesses become more at risk. For instance, business email compromise (BEC) is a type of phishing scam in which an attacker impersonates a high-level executive and attempts to trick an employee or customer into transferring money or sensitive data. According to the FBI’s 2017 Internet Crime Report, BEC and email account compromise (EAC) cost 15,690 victims more than $676 million, representing the highest reported losses for any cybercrime. These are alarming statistics and prove the case for why security awareness training is a necessity.

Implementing Cybersecurity Awareness Training is Good Business

Businesses that do not implement security awareness training for their employees suffer greater losses in cyber-attacks. According to a US State of Cybercrime Survey, companies without security awareness training for employees suffered 322% higher financial loss due to cybersecurity than companies that did implement cybersecurity awareness training. That being said, only 45% of organizations provide employees with mandatory security awareness training, according to 2018 Security Awareness Training Statistics posted by NetSec.

The good news, however, is that cybersecurity training is on the rise. Security awareness training for employees is one of the fastest-growing categories in the cybersecurity industry. According to Cybersecurity Ventures’ first annual edition of the Cybersecurity Almanac, global spending on security training is predicted to reach $10 billion by 2027, up from around $1 billion in 2014. A majority of the training is focused on combating phishing scams and ransomware attacks. While it is not a surefire way to prevent all cyber-attacks, education and training has proven to be effective in improving results and teaching employees to be more cautious. The return on investment is worth it according to all statistics.

Does Your Organization Have a Cybersecurity Awareness Training Plan?

Employees are your business’s biggest strength. Without security awareness training, they can also be your biggest vulnerability. Help protect your company and your employees by giving them the knowledge and training that they need to be able to recognize phishing scams and spam. To be most effective, training needs to be offered and made mandatory to you entire employee base, not just those in IT or information security. In addition, cybersecurity awareness training needs to be ongoing. A one-time program or annual class is simply not enough considering how quickly the attackers change methodology. It is best to work with a third-party firm to come up with a cybersecurity awareness training schedule that works best for your company, your budget and your desired outcomes.

SubRosa offers a video-based, continuous training and education solution that creates real-world scenarios for your staff members to identify and work through via its hosted Learning Management System (LMS). Episodes will be delivered to the LMS on a monthly basis, which registered staff members can then access and use to learn about current threats and best practices. Employees’ training journeys can be tracked to ensure all staff members are up-to-date and are not in need of additional remedial training.

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