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Why Employee Cybersecurity Training is Important

Apr 26, 2021

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It is most probably true that most people up to the age of, say, their mid 40s are aware of or at least have some semblance of the word ‘cyber'. Although this is a rough estimation, the term probably rings a bell with most folks except those that have not participated in the culture of the digital, and the internet. It is a term heavily ingrained in everything from fiction novels, through media and film. Why is this? The roots of the term reach far back into the 1940s, long before computers, stemming from the term ‘cybernetics’ which points at the concept of the relationship between man and machine. Today, ‘cyber’ is a neologized morpheme (a new jumbled up term) that covers anything that associates us to computers and the internet. There are even several portmanteaus (word mix and matching) of cyber; cyberse (cyber universe)  Now, the term has been compounded again and we hear the term ‘cybersecurity’ quite a lot, which is a different thing altogether to cybernetics.

What does cybersecurity address though, and why do we keep hearing about it? Well, we’re already into the 2020s and the state of the internet does not paint a very rosy picture in terms of how safe it is for organizations to be online and conduct their work. Cybersecurity is a concept/industry that is there to address all of these issues. In this article, we are going to look at one of the most important topics in the Information Technology industry, which is cybersecurity employee training. This means looking into what cybersecurity at the workplace means.

Cybersecurity And Employee Training


For organizations and business leaders, cybersecurity has been a priority for quite some time. Cybercriminals have increased their attack volume and widened their attack surface, as well as developing new attack vectors. This is especially true for the last few years where some of the worst data breaches and cyberattacks in history have taken place. In short, this translates to the fact that the industry has had to make adjustments and investments in cybersecurity (protecting corporate systems from attacks). The problem is that the industry is highly lacking in trained personnel, cyber-preparedness plans and are not investing where it counts because of a surprising lack of interest in this extremely important subject.

Cybersecurity


Cybersecurity is a combination of ‘cyber’ and ‘security which simply means defense against internet incidents. Now, there is an entire industry offering cyber  solutions and countless portals advocating internet safety. If we are to expand on this, we can add that cybersecurity entails the software and knowledge/training required to fight cybercrime and other issues with the use of the internet.

  • Privacy is also a large problem considered to be under the umbrella of cybersecurity. Not only are organizations suffering from direct cybercrime attacks, but also the privacy of user data is questionable nowadays and policies surrounding this are insufficient


The State of Cybersecurity Training Today


Today, most companies are allowing for remote work, and on top of that are budgeting for permanent remote workers in the future given the state of the world during the pandemic. Cybersecurity is unfortunately overlooked in most companies, and too much trust is given over to mainstream providers and cloud platforms. Over 40% of employees today lack regular cybersecurity training, which means that they are not prepared for a variety of internet incidents. An even more worrying statistic is that at least 10% of employees have never, yes never, received any training relating to cybersecurity. It is absolutely mind-boggling that this is the case, as cybersecurity woes are an enormous problem, especially for small businesses. Perhaps the worst reality of all is that thanks to a lack of training and awareness, over 50% of businesses will go out of business within less than a year!

Now that we know how disappointing the industry’s approach is the cybersecurity training (with hopes that it’ll improve), let’s have a  look at how cybercriminals are attacking businesses (methods and vectors) and following that some tips for enterprise cybersecurity awareness;

  • Phishing(spear or general email social engineering attacks)

  • Malware (adware or spyware)

  • Ransomware(the worst kind of attack)

  • DDoS attacks (brute force attacks)

  • Fileless attacks (invisible attacks that exploit system tools)


The above is a general list that involves the general gamut of cybersecurity incidents targeting SMBs, and even the largest organizations. However, a good suggestion for businesses like SMBs would be to focus and invest in training surrounding social engineering attacks -which are the most common (such as BEC or business email compromise). For large organizations, the focus should be on DDoS, Ransomware and cloud system vulnerabilities. Large organizations always have much larger than SMBs, so accommodating better training and software tools should be less of a problem (although this is still neglected). As far as social engineering attacks go that affect SMBs, it is shocking to think that less than 30% of organizations actually provide social engineering cybersecurity awareness training.

Expert Suggestions For Cybersecurity Training in Businesses


Both SMBs and the largest organizations need to understand that their corporate networks are never fully invincible from cyberattacks and user error. However, every organization/institution/business -whatever the case may be- needs to understand that improving cybersecurity awareness and training will save them much needed liquidity and will help in the battle against catastrophic identity theft, system disruption, and potentially dark consequences such as the closure of business and a host of other avoidable headaches. Finally, the following list contains expert tried-and-tested cybersecurity suggestions;

  • The organization should perform strong audits of its digital ecosystem

  • Small businesses especially should instate regular cybersecurity training


Let’s remember why cybersecurity training is critical nowadays;

  • Employees are not aware of cyberattack risks

  • Security culture must be formed within an organization

  • Data breaches are becoming too common

  • Fixing negligence and user error from the employee side

  • Allowing organizations to continue to survive in a cybercrime era

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