Barriers of Good Cybersecurity and Teaching Good Habits

Cybersecurity can be overwhelming for many companies especially smaller organizations with limited resources. Budget concerns, time constraints, company culture, and lack of best practices can all be barriers to achieving a secure environment. Understanding and overcoming these barriers can save a business millions in clean-up costs and lost productivity. Here we will talk about some of those barriers and some solutions that can help businesses be more secure.

 

Employees think because they don’t know security they can’t help protect the business

 

 While you may have some tech-savvy employees the majority will think since they are not educated in cybersecurity they can-not help combat cyber-attacks. This could not be farther from the truth! Many resources can be found online that provide training related to cybersecurity best practices:

  • Recognizing phishing campaigns
  • Password management
  • Two-factor authentication
  • Reporting suspicious activity
  • Solutions to both major and minor security issues

 

The cost is too high

 

While many of these pieces of training are not free and sometimes it is hard to budget dollars for this type of employee training one question you could ask yourself is; How will money spent on cybersecurity training work for the bottom line of the company? Looking at cybersecurity threats and repercussions of security threats can help make a case to invest.

  • The average cost of a cyberattack is almost 4 million dollars, and this number increases every year. Quality training can help avoid these costs.
  • Cybersecurity training and certification can protect an organization from lawsuits in the event of a data breach. 
  • In a single year, 62 percent of businesses experienced some form of phishing or social engineering attack.
  • Cyberattacks cost $45 billion in 2018 alone.
  • There are webinars and downloadable content, and low-cost resources available online. Use caution in selecting sources you can trust, and look for information dated within the last couple of years.

 

Cybersecurity is time-consuming

 

Just as budgets need to include investments to prevent significant profit loss, an organization must invest in time for cybersecurity training. The average amount of downtime caused by ransomware attacks in the second quarter of 2019 was almost 10 days. That’s 80 hours that each worker is stopped from doing their job.

The amount of time a cyberattack can cost a business is much larger than taking a little time to teach teams to confidently recognize the signs of a phishing scam and audit their personal and professional passwords.

In as little as an hour, you can train workers to avoid mistakes that will cost the organization hours in lost productivity if cybersecurity is ignored. 

 

Company culture

 

Developing a cybersecurity culture requires accountability from the top to drive organizational behavior change. The best way to get everyone on board is to show them how a data breach impacts them personally. Attackers go after things of value—usually money or data. When that data includes the personal, private information of customers, the loss of trust can be long-lasting, costly, and can damage the reputation of the business and everyone tied to the brand. Less trust in the company means the sales team will struggle. Loss of revenue can mean lower or no bonuses at all. Further, the costs of the breach must come from somewhere.

 

Understanding and overcoming these barriers can safeguard your business from a costly cyberattack. 

 

 

 

Source Article

https://www.securitymagazine.com/articles/92739-barriers-to-teaching-employees-good-cybersecurity-habits-and-how-to-overcome-them?_lrsc=1d763b4f-77ec-4a95-b5cf-f23e5244fb86