Cybersecurity awareness is now indispensable for companies against the increased phishing attacks in recent years. Because today, employees are one of the most important elements in creating effective cybersecurity protection. Therefore, companies must keep their employees informed about up-to-date cybersecurity practices and teach them how to defend against phishing attacks. Especially in the last year, we observe significant changes in the training given to employees, along with the changing priorities. Companies slowly realize the importance of cybersecurity awareness. That’s why in this article, we have compiled various information about the absolute musts of cybersecurity awareness for you.
What Does the New Cyber Environment Mean for the Absolute Musts of Cyber Security Awareness?
Since hackers have noticed individuals’ cyber unconsciousness in recent years, most phishing and ransomware attacks have begun to target end-users. That’s why the cyber environment has also changed and has evolved. The focus of the hackers has shifted from complex and demanding technical attacks to social engineering attacks. Most phishing attacks today follow almost the same scenario. Hackers try to trap people by taking advantage of phishing emails, social media, or users’ applications.
According to recent research, almost all attacks against global companies consist of attacks on business emails and spear phishing. Personal phishing e-mails used in spear-phishing attacks have a high success rate. In other words, hackers are now significantly increasing their success rates with advanced and easy to plan phishing attacks.
But don’t worry. While hackers improve themselves, IT professionals aren’t idle. In the same research, it was revealed that cybersecurity awareness caused serious developments. Accordingly, companies that increase their employees’ awareness with cyber awareness training can protect themselves against phishing attacks. When the need for employees with high cyber awareness is increasing, companies are gradually becoming aware of the importance of cybersecurity training. Most companies have begun to follow an employee-oriented cybersecurity approach against BEC and social engineering attacks. So what does this approach involve? Here are the absolute musts of cybersecurity awareness!
The Absolute Musts of Cybersecurity Awareness
Since each sector has its own risks, cyber awareness can differ significantly from sector to sector. In such a situation, many opinions are raised about the absolute musts of cybersecurity awareness. Unfortunately, implementing a common plan suitable for every sector can lead to failure. However, there are certain methods that all companies should apply in the beginning before turning to risks against the sectors. So what are these must-haves?
1. Risk Analysis
Risk analysis means identifying cyber threats currently affecting your company, checking whether there is any information on the internet that could endanger your company. When creating a cybersecurity plan, companies should consider their current status and identify vulnerabilities in their systems. The company’s current status covers both the vulnerabilities in the systems and the employees’ security information. So both should be properly tested.
What can you do for risk analysis?
- Detect the cybersecurity awareness of your employees with Phishing Simulations.
- Scan the internet and frequently used websites using Threat Intelligence tools.
- Use Email Gap Analysis to detect vulnerabilities in your email systems.
Train your employees in accordance with the risks you identify. Identifying risks is just the beginning of effective cybersecurity. The important thing is to train your employees by considering these risks. Comprehensive training lies at the heart of effective cybersecurity programs. The training you provide to your employees should be appropriate to their level and nurture employees in all areas of cybersecurity. Our Cyber Security Awareness Trainer is perfect for this job. With our trainer, you can train your employees against phishing, targeted phishing, whaling, BEC, ransomware, and social engineering attacks. Click for more information.
3. Increasing and strengthening your means of protection
After analyzing the risks and providing your employees with the necessary training, protection tools come next. Increasing and strengthening your protection tools will help you take the necessary action quickly in the event of a possible attack. Also, powerful protection tools will help your IT team detect attacks. So what kind of protection tools should companies use? For advanced and secure protection, we recommend our Incident Response and Threat Sharing tools.
Our Incident Response tool allows you to report suspicious e-mails quickly. With this tool, your employees can report a possible phishing or ransomware attack with a single click and enable your IT team to take action. Our Threat Sharing tool functions as an early warning system, helping you maximize awareness by spreading information to all your employees in the event of a phishing attack.
4. Reporting
After taking the necessary precautions and maximizing the protection level, all that remains is to make past and forward reporting. Periodically measuring and reporting your company’s vulnerability to threats will help you determine the progress and see the future more clearly. You can share the information you obtain with your investors and company components and make a plan accordingly. Especially recording the results of phishing simulations and making the necessary reporting will enable you to understand the distance you have covered in cybersecurity.
If you support your employees and the company with training and tools suitable for your location, you will see that your progress accelerates. Besides, by examining the number of emails reported by employees, the rate of falling victim to malware and phishing attacks, the time IT teams spend on training/protection, you can understand which measures are more successful, and how much time and money are spent on which.
If you follow the steps above, you will see that your cybersecurity improves and your company gets stronger against phishing attacks. This employee-centered approach can change everything for companies when it comes to phishing. Thanks to this approach, you can carry out your daily affairs with peace of mind without fear of phishing attacks.
“This post is originally published at www.phishing.org.uk”
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