Research suggests that cybersecurity breaches are expected to grow to 15.4 million by 2023. Despite technological improvements and advancements in recent years, cybersecurity still proves to be a growing issue no matter how much security is used. Hackers are becoming more sophisticated with their attacks and tools, in return increasing the crucial importance of proactive cybersecurity measures.
There isn’t a specific pool of businesses that are being targeted, and therefore the prediction of these sophisticated attackers is becoming harder and harder. However, there are simply IT solutions that can be used to build a stronger defence against cyber attackers such as:
As much as all of the above points are extremely important in increasing cyber security within your business, there is one crucial method of protection that many businesses forget or choose not to invest in and that is employee cyber security training.
Your employees are one of your biggest vulnerabilities and strengths when it comes to cyber security. Quite often this method of protection is referred to as a ‘human firewall’.
What is a ‘human firewall’?
This term is used to categorise a group of people in an organisation who all work towards detecting cyber attacks and following the best practices in an effort to minimise the risks of data breaches and cyber attacks.
Traditional firewalls are an IT system with the core purpose of monitoring, filtering, and detecting all inbound and outbound traffic. They are intelligent and sophisticated enough to recognise, report and block anything that is considered to be malicious. You can picture this type of system as the middle ground between a trusted and an untrusted network.
How to build a ‘human firewall’?
Employee cyber security training
An extensive and detailed cyber security training session is a foundation for any reliable and trustworthy team of human firewalls. The goal is to provide your employees with the right set of skills to recognise an incoming cyberattack and have a comprehensive understanding of what actions should be taken to minimise the risk of this attack launching on your business.
Common areas that are covered during these sessions are:
Ensure that these sessions are specific to your business and showcase real examples that your employees may have to face. With technology ever-changing, frequent refresher sessions should be regularly scheduled allowing this newfound knowledge and practices to be retained.
Policies and procedures
Alongside cyber security training, it’s crucial that your employees have easy access to formal policies and procedures that outline what employees should do in event of a cyber attack. These documents should be simple, concise and standardised to ensure that employees can easily understand and follow the best practices that have been outlined.
Cyber security is one of the most effective ways of building a human firewall and protecting your business against targeted cyber attacks and data breaches. At Solutions4IT we can implement and provide ongoing cyber security training to empower your employees with the knowledge of recognising malicious cyber attempts and best practices for dealing with them.
If employee security awareness training is something that you want to start introducing within your organisation, speak with our IT team!
