3 Reasons You Want to Offer Cyber Security Training to Your Employees

3 Reasons You Want to Offer Cyber Security Training to Your Employees

Our blog is no stranger to the topic of cyber security. We’ve covered recent breaches, malware, and easy things you can do to stay safe on the internet and keep your devices free of viruses.

But what about the human element? It’s estimated that 90% of data breaches are caused by human error. We know that sounds high and you may be thinking how that can be possible.

How hacking works

Credit to xkcd.

We’re all aware of the trope of the genius hacker who can hack someone’s machine without them knowing AND without them doing anything on their side. For the most part this is just not true. There are ways for them to access your machine undetected by you, but most of the time you will be involved in some way

An example would be a sneaky malware attached to innocuous looking file (like an executable disguised as a PDF that looks like it’s coming from a coworker or friend whose email they spoofed). Examples like this are exactly how most bad actors are getting into the victim’s system.

What’s worse, they may not act right away. They may wait weeks or months gathers as much data as possible before striking, so they don’t just take YOU down but your business as well.

Another way is shown in the above comic, if a data breach happens on a site you frequent they will have your credentials for that site. The hacker will then go on to try those credentials on other sites such as email providers and banking websites.

This is why cyber security training is so important, you can have the best software in place to try to mitigate the human element, but bad actors will always be doing their very best to thwart that software. Having your team prepared properly is the only way to fully protect you and your business from a cyber-attack.

That training will cover topics such as good password hygiene (vary your passwords!) or how to use 2 factor authentication as just two examples. Some cyber security training providers will even conduct simulated phishing attempts so you can see first hand how easy it is to fall victim to one and how to avoid it.

To sum it up here are the 3 reasons we think cyber security training is a great idea.

  1. It protects your business. Your employees will make the right choices if they receive a sketchy email or link to download something (such as forwarding it to your IT team instead of clicking on it).
  2. It will make the software and programs you have in place for cyber security already more effective if your employees know how to properly use them (instead of possibly ignoring or even bypassing them).
  3. It will allow you and your employees to stay up to date on recent or emerging threats so if there is something out there that is hard to avoid, you will know how to handle it.

You may be wondering where to go for cyber security training, and to be honest the best place to start is your IT Team. They should be taking the time to explain the systems they’re putting in place and how to use them in layman’s terms for you and your team.

We even create free resources for our clients such as our one page cyber security checklist (found here).

Your IT Team may even have a recommendation for the best online training you and your employees can attend. Two that we have personally worked with are ID Agent and Breach Secure Now. They both offer online training and even dark web monitoring.

In whatever way you go about it making cyber security training a necessary element in your business is taking a proactive stance against cyber-attacks.

Looking for more to read? We suggest these tech articles from the last week.

This article was powered by Valley TechLogic, an IT provider in Atwater, CA. You can find more information at https://www.valleytechlogic.com/ or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/valleytechlogic/ . Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/valleytechlogic.

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