A smart man makes a mistake, learns from it, and never makes that mistake again. But a wise man finds a smart man and learns from him how to avoid the mistake altogether. Roy H. Williams
In recent years, a lot of companies have been affected by ransomware one way or the other. Highly confidential data has been compromised, and organizations have suffered on a large scale at the hands of these scammers.
In the present era, it is important to educate employees to detect, secure, and recover from such threats. But how? Firstly, while hiring, companies should ensure that the employees are well aware of the cybercrime industry and the threat it poses to the business world. The employees should know how these things work and what are the risks involved.
Ever since the business industry has gone online, it is essential for companies who do all of their business online to keep addressing this issue in their board meetings and their end of the year or beginning of the year training sessions.
Furthermore, man is vulnerable to online scams. They can easily fall victim to phishing, promotional surveys, and other tactics used by cybercriminals. This sometimes leads to unprecedented leakage of important data or personal info. Employees are not trained to deal with the threats or are not told how to make sure they are well aware of how to prevent being a target. There is often no training given with regards to phishing or pharming. The employees aren’t briefed about the spam emails and how to prevent them from becoming a target.
The areas/ departments/ organizations which require security awareness training are finance departments, government organizations, healthcare institutes, financial institutes, universities, and banks. The IT departments of these organizations are mainly responsible for keeping the employees in the loop.
Recently, a few major companies were hit by ransomware in Russia, and other countries across the globe, which led to some significant loses of valuable company information.
This can be prevented once the companies start investing in training its employees as they are the primary source of malware or ransomware entering a system.
The most important areas to be covered while training staff for these potential threats is:
- Using a secure password. The password strength is crucial in high profile organizations. Employees should be taught to use a strong password and keep changing them regularly.
- The second most important thing is detecting spam emails or attachments that look familiar but aren’t safe to open.
- The employees should be taught to use cloud services or detachable data devices where they can save their data from being lost or deleted.
- The usage of social media at work can also pose a threat to the company. Employees must be told to refrain from filling out online informational forms or surveys which require personal info and maybe misused later on.
After the security awareness training is completed, the company should test the knowledge of the employees to see if they have learned anything about the cybercrime world and how it works and how to prevent it from getting affected by it. With better training programs and effective security measures, cybercrimes can be minimalized soon.
