What is Cybersecurity Awareness?
Cybersecurity awareness is all about digital security, involving and educating all employees, regardless of their role, about the importance of protecting the organization from cyber threats. During daily operations, safeguarding sensitive information becomes an acute concern as potential security risks lurk around the world of the online web. This awareness of how to safeguard the online data of the company and clients is developed through continuous training, resources, and tools to ensure employees are well-prepared to defend against cyber-attacks and breaches.
At the same time, building cybersecurity awareness is an ongoing process that must be updated regularly to address new and emerging threats. When shaping behavior around the subject of safety—be it digital or physical—we must always begin with fostering the right kind of behavior. Behavior is not simply a matter of posting rules and regulations on an office whiteboard. It requires a top-down approach that cultivates a positive cybersecurity consciousness through training programs, activities, and incentives. Cybersecurity culture should be all about creating a unified and conscious attitude towards security. It should not be restricted to just the management or segregated departments but should involve the entire workforce.
Therefore, the cultural model, embodying the habitus of professionals within the company, should include communications that are clear and understandable to everyone. Mutual goals, policies, and processes must be defined with clear, consistent, and easy-to-follow communication and learning. With time, habits become ingrained, and instincts and gut-feelings influence the decision-making of all employees, regardless of rank and station. This shall create a sense of pride and preservation within your team and instill confidence in your customers that you can be a trusted partner.
More importantly, as cyber threats grow, the insurance industry has evolved and updated its insurance policies to counter the threat of online fraud, hacking, and other forms of phishing attacks. Having a robust and responsive team that has a sharp nose for sniffing out troubles gives insurance companies some confidence in protecting your company from cyber threats. With such a team, reducing the costs of insurance premiums for cybersecurity is a great possibility, considering the growing competitive landscape of Cyber-Insurance.
Below, we shall briefly describe how you can develop a cybersecurity culture in your organization. This long-term process requires constant discipline and commitment, which should be reflected in your company’s office spaces.
1. Promote a Culture of Responsibility and Accountability
Creating a culture of cybersecurity starts with making every employee feel responsible for the organization’s digital safety. Clear communication about each individual’s role in maintaining security is paramount, as well as establishing guidelines for reporting potential incidents. You should encourage accountability to ensure that employees understand the consequences of security lapses. This accountability should motivate employees to follow best practices. Emphatic leadership must set the tone by actively participating in and supporting cybersecurity initiatives and demonstrating their importance throughout the organization. To make cyber-awareness culture even more concrete, cybersecurity training should be included in the onboarding process itself and regularly reinforced to build a robust defense against cyber threats.
In this manner, a foundation of a strong cybersecurity culture can be laid. Commitment and support of your organization’s leadership become manifest when executives and managers take part in the process, setting the tone from the topmost rank and actively participating in security initiatives. They should also communicate the organization’s security goals and objectives by allocating resources to cybersecurity initiatives, and regularly reviewing and assessing the effectiveness of the organization’s security posture.
2. Make Security Awareness Fun, Not Fearful
Creating awareness should be engaging and ongoing, not just a one-time training session. Creative approaches, such as interactive workshops, games, and simulations, can make learning about cybersecurity more enjoyable and memorable. Regularly updated training programs ensure that employees stay informed about the latest threats and know how to respond appropriately. Encouraging a positive and proactive attitude toward security can significantly enhance an organization’s overall defense posture. These activities will train employees to act as the first line of defense against online attacks.
Security awareness proceeds with basic lessons about security. You must divide the training sessions into levels to judge each person’s ability to detect threats. Unfortunately, because of a lack of creative approaches, security awareness programs have gotten a bad reputation due to the mechanisms used to deliver them. Fortunately, there are many new companies providing interactive online cybersecurity training sessions and webinars that are creative and make it fun for participants.
For employees with expertise in the technical development of software, application security knowledge is crucial for such developers and testers within the organization. Also known as AppSec, IT or software engineers need AppSec awareness, which involves more advanced lessons to know how to build secure products and services.
Awareness is an ongoing activity, so always take advantage of a crisis as a good test case. Bad things are going to happen to your organization anyway, and many times, they will be tied directly to a security problem. Grow your security culture with these moments and use them as examples for developing a training syllabus.
3. Create a Cybersecurity Ambassador Program
Implementing a cybersecurity ambassador program can foster a security-first mindset across the organization. By selecting employees from various departments to serve as cybersecurity champions, you can promote awareness and best practices within their teams. Recognizing and celebrating the efforts of these ambassadors and other employees who demonstrate strong cybersecurity practices can reinforce the importance of vigilance and shared responsibility.
Identify enthusiastic employees who can become “security champions.” These champions can answer questions from peers and promote best practices through internal communication channels. These ambassadors receive additional training and resources, enabling them to act as liaisons between their departments and the IT security team. This keeps security awareness top of mind. Security champions can be a valuable resource for their colleagues. They foster a sense of shared responsibility for cybersecurity within the organization.
How can we identify these ‘Champions’, you ask?
How about someone who reported a suspicious email? Or has someone discovered a fake phishing website that looks like a real financial website? If they did, then publicly acknowledge their contributions to keep motivation high. Recognition can be a powerful tool. It helps reinforce positive behavior and encourages continued vigilance.
4. Encourage Cross-Departmental Collaboration
Cybersecurity shouldn’t be restricted to computer nerds and tech-savvy IT staff. Awareness needs to be ubiquitous across all functional departments as a cross-functional issue that impacts every aspect of an organization. You should encourage collaboration between departments so that a more comprehensive understanding of security risks and a unified defense strategy can evolve. Regular meetings and workshops that bring together IT, security, business operations, and executive leadership can facilitate the sharing of insights and best practices. This collaborative approach ensures that cybersecurity considerations are integrated into all business decisions, enhancing the overall security posture of the organization.
A collection of individuals from various departments should come together as a security community. This security community will be the backbone of a sustainable security culture in your organization. Everyone will join together against the common problem of cybersecurity and awareness while eliminating the “us versus them” mentality that infects corporate settings. The security community can make itself relevant with one-on-one mentoring and weekly or monthly meetings. It can even evolve to become a yearly conference, bringing the best and brightest technical minds from the organization. Given such a platform, they can share their knowledge and skills on a big stage.
Members of such a team can be called ‘Security Advocates’. Security advocates are those people with a passion for making things secure. These are the leaders within your security community. They shall act as liaisons between departments and top management, ensuring that security goals are achieved.
5. Be Aware of Cyber Threats
‘Be Aware of Cyber Threats’ makes a great poster in your office’s breakroom, where all your security enthusiasts meet for discussions over a cup of coffee. Campaign kits with posters, infographics, and presentations like these can reinforce best practices and keep security at the top of mind. But it also means keeping up with the latest cybersecurity threats, which is crucial for maintaining a strong defense. Utilizing resources like security awareness training platforms can help employees strengthen their security habits and reduce human risk. Regularly updating training programs to address new threats, such as phishing attacks and password management, ensures that employees remain vigilant and prepared to protect both personal and organizational data.
The most important four points that should be in any cyber awareness program are from the National Cybersecurity Alliance’s key points for Cybersecurity:
- Enabling multi-factor authentication
- Recognizing and reporting phishing
- Using strong passwords with a password manager
- Installing software updates
These four points are so important that we can only quote the Verizon Business Data Breach Report, which mentions that human error still accounts for the majority (82%) of data breaches in 2022. This is why it’s more important than ever to spread cyber-awareness among employees.
6. Conduct Cybersecurity Drills
Well, when it comes to shock treatments, nothing builds security awareness best with a simulated emergency. Cybersecurity drills, like fire drills, can help employees practice their response to potential cyber threats. These drills can identify knowledge gaps and build confidence in handling real-world scenarios. By simulating phishing attacks and other common threats, organizations can evaluate the effectiveness of their policies, procedures, and training programs. Drills can have password-cracking exercises to identify weak passwords, distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, data loss and backup exercises, and many more to simulate real-world scenarios.
But, of course, simulated events and real-world events don’t necessarily have the same characteristics. However, such drills help businesses understand how to respond to real-world cyber-attacks. Such a practice develops a strong cybersecurity culture that makes organizations adapt to emerging cyber events. Firms simulating phishing attacks, as these are the most prevalent, can evaluate the effectiveness of their cybersecurity policies, procedures, messages, and training with scenario-based surveys. These surveys can also provide valuable insights into employees’ understanding and intentions, helping to refine and improve cybersecurity initiatives. Such regular drills and exercises make firms immune to cyber incidents and attacks.
Conclusion
By implementing these six strategies, organizations can build a robust culture of cybersecurity awareness, where empowered employees can protect sensitive information and defend against cyber threats.
But more than just a team of cyber-aware people, you shall also have the added advantages of customer-trust, lowered chance of data theft and privacy violations, and a reputation that insurance companies can trust and rely on. With such a reputation, you can negotiate lowered insurance premiums. After all, when more than 80% human errors derived from cyber risks are out of the picture, an insurance company can certainly help protect your business from online threats.
At InsuranceAdvisor, you can get a bindable cyber insurance quote in about five minutes from a leading carrier in the cyber insurance world. Take the time to get a customizable cyber insurance quote today.