Why is security awareness training important?

What does security awareness training entail?

Security awareness training is a powerful tool used by IT and cyber security service providers to enhance workplace digital security and reduce the risk of phishing invasion.
SAT consists of a series of modules specially designed to educate employees and users about data breaches, phishing methodology, and preventive technologies to combat phishing. It helps them identify, detect, report and / or prevent cyber incidents in time so that valuable business data and resources are protected.
Most importantly, security awareness training reminds employees that they do play a crucial role in enforcing better cyber security within the organization.

The role of employees in cyber security

Cyber security reports make it evident that human error accounts for over 90% of cyber security breaches.
Through security awareness training, employees are better equipped to detect signs of fraud and phishing and are also trained to respond to cyber threats in a more productive way than panicking.
With security-aware employees, your organization automatically minimizes the risk of leakage of personally identifiable information, loss of intellectual property, siphoning of money, and damage to your hard-earned brand reputation.
Awareness training highlights common mistakes employees make when handling sensitive business data, including emails, physical documents, and company hardware devices like USBs etc. When employees know better, they can protect themselves better.

Leveraging phishing tests

Phishing tests are simulated phishing campaigns that test your employees’ preparedness against real-life phishing threats. With phishing tests, you can assess how your employees react to your dummy campaigns, whether they open your phishing mails or click on your phishing links, and whether they report suspicious emails.
Additional benefits of phishing tests with Logix:
• Use real-life simulated attacks, with realistic spam landing pages that can mimic actual valid use cases like phone number verification forms, login pages, offers etc.
• Customize the copy and content of your phishing campaign to attune with employees you are targeting to test.
• Create sets of employees to test out various customized simulated phishing tests.

Best practices for security awareness training

The most important thing for an effective security awareness training activity is to generate traction. For this, you need to consider a few points.
1. Ensure you deliver training in digestible chunks, in an easy-to-understand format. This makes training more permanent and long-lasting.
2. Conduct training sessions regularly, and frequently. Repetition makes perfect.
3. Remember that your employees are engaging in training by taking time out from their regular tasks and busy schedules. Your training should be concise and hard-hitting. Something that delivers more results in lesser time.
4. Training results should be handled with positive reinforcement and not with a penalty-based system. Employees should look at security as their own responsibility and not as another chore they have to grudgingly undertake.