Published: February 1, 2024When’s the last time you had to take cyber security awareness training? Due to the ever-changing threat of cyber crimes, it is important that organizations prioritize nailing employee cyber security awareness training for employees.
Having solid cyber security awareness training is one of many important lines of defense in your organization’s cyber security set up and as some might argue, the most important.
Since it is so important you want to be sure to get it right and avoid common mistakes. To do that you want to put a few practices in place so that you can empower your employees by providing the tools and confidence so they can face these cyber security challenges.
Here are a few practices you can put into place to aid in nailing employee cyber security awareness training for employees.
Table of Contents
5 Practices for Nailing Employee Cyber security Awareness Training for Employees
Make cyber security awareness training more than a one-off activity
If cyber security awareness training is something people in your organization have to just do once and check it off the to-do list, then the effort will be futile. Instead, foster a sense of curiosity that encourages employees to keep seeking how to better understand and respond to the new and evolving threats that face them on the cyber landscape.
As with anything we strive to learn more about, repetition is a key factor in making the new knowledge become second nature to us. If your organization’s employees only receive cyber security awareness training once in a while or worse yet, only once, then the positive habits associated with the goal of the training will never take root.
Deliver relevant and up to date information
In order to encourage engagement, make sure the cyber security awareness training your organization completes is up to date on technology as well as relevant to your organization’s industry. It is also a huge plus if it isn’t boring. In doing this, you are more likely to catch the attention of your employees when they see how it directly impacts them.
Measure behaviors rather than activity
While having a high completion rate is great, what you really want to see is a change in behavior with your organization’s employees. Maybe you have test phishing emails that are sent to employees, has the no-click rate increased since you implemented cyber security training? Or maybe even the number of reported phishing emails to your IT administrator has increased. These are the types of behaviors you want to see when doing cyber security awareness training.
Create a culture of growth
It is important that employees can feel encouraged in their cyber security efforts and not scolded for shortcomings on training. Leadership in an organization also needs to be fully invested in the training program as well and speak positively about it. You want to foster some buy in from your employees so that they feel invested in the success of your organization’s cyber security plan.
Seek help when needed
Developing a comprehensive cyber security awareness training program can be a lot of work. Be sure to seek help from external experts such as an IT Managed Security Services Provider. They will be able to keep you up to date on the latest developments in cyber security and help you have a solid training program.
Plan to Succeed
By putting the above practices in place your organization can be better equipped to handle the increasing challenges of cyber security. Having your employees trained up can be another way for your organization to strengthen just another layer of your cyber security strategy.
Want to chat with someone about your cyber security strategy? As always, we are here to help.
