Cyber threats are increasing in sophistication. More companies are being targeted because of the sensitive data they protect.
Employees are one of the strongest lines of defense against cybercriminals. Unfortunately, employees also are the main reason cyberattacks are successful.
The 2021 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report shows that 85% of data breaches result from human interaction. This is why employees must be cyber-aware to protect their employers’ digital assets.
Follow these guidelines to increase cyber-awareness in your workforce.
Elevate Your Company’s Security Posture
Having the latest security technology and integrated security solutions helps protect against cyber threats.
- Protect your endpoints with endpoint discovery and response (EDR) solutions.
- Guard against ransomware with the newest EDR solutions that provide real-time threat intelligence, management, analysis, visibility, and protection before and after infection.
- These solutions use customizable playbooks to automate response and remediation.
- Other effective cybersecurity tools include email gateway security, sandboxing, incident response, and network segmentation.
Implement Zero Trust
Because any user or device can be hacked, every access request must be verified.
- Provide employees and devices access to only the resources required to perform their tasks.
- Increase security-driven networking by deploying zero trust to safeguard the network’s remote edges.
- Security can react to changes in the network infrastructure while providing access to the programs based on user identity and context.
Emphasize Cyber Training
Cyber training must be an ongoing priority.
- Understanding changing cyber threats increases employee awareness and defense.
- Cyber training should include concerns related to remote and hybrid work environments.
- Recognizing and reporting suspicious cyber activity, like phishing emails, is important.
- Social engineering, such as spear phishing, smishing, and vishing, is used in many ransomware attacks.
- Employees must be trained to protect against these attacks.
Implement Cybersecurity Drills
Practicing cybersecurity drills reinforces employee learning.
- Tabletop exercises walk employees through a fictitious security incident on paper. It explains how the cybercriminal and target may behave. Employees learn what to do and who they should alert in such a case.
- A mock phishing email may contain a link or attachment that alerts the testing team when it is opened. The link or attachment may send the employee to a mock login page. The page alerts the testing team when an employee reaches the page and/or logs in with their credentials. Employers can retrain these employees on the importance of not clicking suspicious links or attachments.
- A mock spear-phishing email may include internal or public information to increase the believability of its message. The email is sent to C-suite leaders to see whether anyone clicks the link or attachment. The testing team is alerted when this happens. The leaders can be retrained on the importance of not clicking suspicious links or attachments.
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