8 reasons you should make security awareness training a priority

Cyber-attacks can be expensive, disruptive and stressful for small businesses and contrary to popular belief they do happen to businesses like yours.

We’ve moved past viruses arriving in email attachments or on memory sticks – these days threats come in very sophisticated spoof emails that convince you to click the link.   Imagine one of your team clicking to unsubscribe from a mailing list that they didn’t ask to be put on, only for that link to infect your business network with a virus.  It really is that easy.

The biggest leap forward in preventing cyber attacks in the last year has been security awareness training becoming available to businesses at a very low cost. We’ve listed 8 reasons why security awareness training is invaluable for all businesses:

End users are the weak link

It takes just one employee to click a phishing link or a malicious attachment for your company’s data to be compromised and it’s no surprise that the organisations who fall victim to data breaches are the ones who have very little security awareness training in place. It’s unfair to simply expect your team to “be vigilant” when hoax emails are now so convincing that even the most technical recipients have to look hard to check if they’re genuine.  If your users aren’t being educated on the fact that phishing emails, man in the middle attacks, spear phishing and all these other new attack methods exist then they can’t be expected to spot them when they happen.

Cyber security threats continue to grow

Cyber-crime is a lucrative business for criminals, and attacks are only going to grow in number and sophistication. In order to combat the sophisticated cyber-attacks, companies need to educate their employees on how these attacks can affect the company, how to spot them and how to prevent them.

Data and security is a matter of trust for consumers

Customers are increasingly concerned about the safety of their personal data and 73% of consumers would reconsider using a company’s services or buying its products if it failed to keep their data safe.   Data breaches now have to be registered with the ICO, so it’s not something you can simply deal with quietly in-house in many cases.

No target is too small for a cyber criminal

Small companies often have the false belief that they are not targets and cyber criminals know this. Data breaches cause more damage than a small business expect (don’t forget, damage can be reputational not just physical) and can be prevented with very little effort and very little expense.   For the cyber criminals it’s easier to target many small businesses than one big ones so their targets are increasingly smaller businesses.

Security awareness training is required in certain government regulations

To combat the growing list of cyber-attacks and to protect customer and employee data, most businesses are now required to have some level of security awareness training in place.  We’re also starting to hear that it’s becoming an increasingly common requirement in tender documents and supply chain terms.

 

We believe it’s key that businesses ensure their teams are confident they can protect themselves from harmful activity online. We recommend a security awareness training platform that’s not expensive but is extremely effective at training your team and reporting your cyber security risk.   We’re offering a 2 week free trial to any client who’d like to see what it’s all about so if you’d like any more information on our security awareness training then just speak to one of our superstar technicians today.

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