Training in security awareness reduces and prevents human risk. Effective security awareness training teaches good cyber hygiene, security threats, and how to spot cyberattacks delivered via email and online surfing. It is designed to assist consumers in understanding the role they play in battling security breaches.
Why do your employees need security awareness training?
Research shows that human mistakes cause over 90% of security breaches. Security awareness training can reduce risk and help avoid the loss of PII, intellectual property, funds, or brand reputations. Employee cybersecurity errors, such as tailgating or incorrect document destruction, can occur whether utilizing email, the internet, or offline. These errors can be addressed by an efficient awareness training program.
Use phishing tests to increase security awareness
Using the Mimecast Awareness Training platform, creating a test campaign for phishing emails is simple. You may prepare to distribute a phishing template to your users in less than ten minutes:
- Use realistic single- and multi-page templates that cover everything from false news and parcel tracking to fake promotions and password resets due to unwanted logins, or use real-life de-weaponized assaults.
- Easily alter your landing pages and phish wording to match upcoming employee attack efforts.
- Indicate which staff members will be the recipients of your phishing email testing, along with the templates they will get and the desired launch date.
What are the best practices for how to approach awareness training?
In order to lower user risk, effective security awareness training emphasizes including today’s workforce. A lot of security awareness training programs instruct one-off sessions that are either forgettable or too informational, ignoring basic practices in teaching. Training must be consistent and given in tiny doses to accommodate employees’ hectic schedules for it to be retained. Most importantly, comedy and positive reinforcement are more effective in helping people remember crucial security subjects than monotonous or fear-based communications.
Critical security awareness training topics
To keep your users’ material current and to reflect the evolving security dangers that your business confronts, The research firm Mime Awareness Training constantly publishes new training modules. Mimecast offers monthly shorter training centered on ongoing cyberattacks or seasonal scams, as well as specialist subjects addressing new data protection rules, in addition to 12 to 15 yearly training modules centered on information security themes.
Topics included:
- Educating staff members on phishing awareness and how to spot and respond to possible phishing emails
- Password security, which includes advice on creating strong passwords and steering clear of using one’s own.
- Privacy concerns, including guidance on safeguarding the private information of clients, associates, staff members, and the business.
- Compliance, including GDPR, PCI, and HIPAA compliance.
- Insider threats, training staff on how to spot dangers that may emerge from inside the business.
- Training teaches employees how to spot CEO/wire fraud, where scammers impersonate a C-level executive to trick the organization out of thousands of dollars.
- Focus employee education on the vulnerability of data in motion and the protective measures needed to secure it.
- office hygiene, educating staff members on how to safeguard buildings, paper, screens, and workstations.