How to Make Your Staff the Last Line in Defence Against Phishing

29/03/2021

It’s your last day of work for the week and the end of a busy day. While you are busy multi-tasking your email pings. It’s an email from HR about ‘significant changes to employee holiday policies due to COVID-19’. Scanning the email, you become slightly irritated that there are possible changes afoot for taking time off. Curious to know more you click the link to the HR update and BOOM! there's a red screen telling you that you’ve been phished.

You feel a complete fool, you’ve read about people being hooked by phishing scams and always thought you were too smart to be caught out! Luckily, this time it was a simulated phishing email set up by work that emulates a real-world attack and the only thing hurt is your pride!

One of the greatest threats to the security of your organisation’s data is from within your company, often from a non-malicious, uninformed employee. Did you know that 91% of successful data breaches stem from a phishing attack? A successful phishing attack can cause untold damage such as reputational harm, loss of custom, loss of money, business disruption and data breaches. As phishing attacks become more sophisticated it’s important to train your employees to know what to look out for.

Every organisation should train its employees to spot potential malicious threats such as phishing. Your users should be taught about data security, email attacks along with your current policies and procedures. Investing in IT security awareness training will enable them to become your last line in defence against cybercrime. 

What is IT security awareness training? 

IT security awareness training is the formal process of educating employees on how they can help prevent costly data breaches. It equips them with the knowledge to avoid careless mistakes and how they can take appropriate action to prevent the loss of important data assets. Many employees will not know what threats exist and many will lack the confidence in spotting the tell-tale signs of a scam email. IT security awareness training aims to build a positive security-based culture within your business, using ongoing reinforced education that avoids singling out employees if they do make a mistake.

The benefits of IT security awareness training 

If you are a small or medium-sized business, there are numerous benefits of initiating IT security awareness training within your organisation. All members of your team should be included, whether they are permanent, temporary staff or contractors. These benefits include¹: 

1. Regular IT security training develops a security focused culture and makes it a habit for employees
2. It will empower and encourage your staff to take responsibility for IT security within your organisation
3. Investing in training will help protect your data and networks
4. Helps prevent downtime and disruption to your workflow
5. Training leads to employees adopting better IT security practices at a higher rate
6. Leads to proactive and preventative IT security rather than being reactive
7. Gives a greater understanding of what risks employees are facing, this can then inform your IT security strategy
8. Increases awareness of potential threats and how to respond to them
9. Everyone will be on the same page when it comes to your IT security strategy
10. Allows your business to remain compliant with required regulations

How does our IT security awareness training work?

NCI partners with a leading web-based IT security awareness training provider who offers relevant and engaging online training that educates participants to make smarter security decisions.

Our modern IT security awareness training embraces the use of over 1200 immersive learning resources such as interactive modules, videos, games, posters and newsletters that makes learning fun and engaging. These resources cover areas such as GDPR, passwords, phishing, data protection, social engineering, Payment Card Industry Security Standard (PCI DSS) and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

Our fully automated simulated phishing attacks allow you to test your employee’s knowledge on spotting the signs of malicious threats. Results are easily accessible with advanced holistic reporting for both security awareness training and phishing campaigns. Our ready-to-go cybersecurity training can be easily customised to suit your business and follows a simple deployment process. 

1. A training profile is created for each department allocating company and department specific training to each. Users are assigned to a profile.
2. Users are contacted every 2-3 weeks and asked to take part in allocated training. This is supplemented with additional phishing tests.
3. If a user is phished, extra remedial training is allocated.
4. Training records and reports are easily available to the user and their manager.

Ready to make your employees your last line in defence against cybercrime?

To find out more about our IT Security awareness training on offer call us on 01326 379 497 or contact us here.

Sources

¹https://resources.infosecinstitute.com/topic/10-benefits-of-security-awareness-training/

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