Cybersecurity and Employee Buy-In

At Cadamier Network Security in Denver, we see cybersecurity and employee buy-in as very important parts of your overall business security program. Cybersecurity is important to you and it should be just as important to your employees. Your employees can be a large security vulnerability in your organization. If your employees understand how important cybersecurity is to the protection of your organization, the vulnerability of your employees can become much smaller. Here are some tips on how to achieve better cybersecurity and employee buy-in.

Use “Live-Fire” Training Exercises

If your organization’s employees undergo a “live-fire” training, they experience cyber attacks as though they are real. Part of such training includes reviewing lessons learned from the experience as well as reviewing implications and possible prevention strategies for the future. For example, your IT team could regularly send fishing emails to employees to find out what happens. This can provide information about people or departments who need additional training. Over time, you can use the information to determine how well training is working and to find out what level of improvement has been gained.

Make Cyber Awareness Part of On-Boarding

New employees should experience cybersecurity awareness from day one. This emphasizes the level of importance of such security. Additionally, you should also ensure that your cybersecurity messages are continuous and repeated.

Perform Evaluations

Find out how vulnerable your business is to a cyber attack. Awareness of the strengths and weaknesses of your cybersecurity allows you to determine a clear path toward improvement. Testing also allows you to spot potential weaknesses you may not find otherwise. This can be a great way to determine how advanced of a firewall solution you need.

Have a Formal Plan

Create a formalized plan that encompasses your cybersecurity training. This plan should be executed, reviewed, and updated regularly. The updates should include a review of new risks and new cybersecurity concerns.

Get Buy-In

For a good cybersecurity plan, you need understanding, commitment, and appropriate and dedicated resources. This means you need buy-in from your employees, but also buy-in among all your leaders and executives. It is important that there is dedicated on-going funding supporting the budget, people, and security management needed for good cybersecurity.

Communication

For any cybersecurity plan to work, regular and clear communication with all employees is a necessity. All departments need to be on board with using best practices and completing training for your cybersecurity to function optimally.

Training Should Be Continuous

Because cybersecurity is a moving target, training needs to be offered throughout the year. The training also needs to be specific and tailored to an employee’s job. An IT employee is going to have very different cyber security risks than a customer service employee. Recognizing this and incorporating it into your training will improve your overall cybersecurity. Additionally, your cybersecurity training should be as up-to-date as possible to be truly successful.

Knowing how intertwined cybersecurity and employee buy-in are, we hope the above tips help you in improving your cybersecurity. If you need help with cybersecurity in your organization, contact us here at Cadamier in Denver.