Humans are the weakest link when it comes to cybersecurity risk. According to Verizon, 68% of breaches involved mistakes by nonmalicious insiders.
Protecting your and your company’s sensitive information is imperative for the longevity and security of your business. And humans, rather than technology, represent the greatest risk to organizations.
It is essential to gain a deeper understanding of how organizations manage human risk. Companies must grow and develop a robust security awareness culture to better manage cybersecurity risk.
So how do you take actionable steps to build a sustainable security culture in your organization that drives behavior change? Let’s take a closer look.
4 Simple Ways to Build Strong Cyber Awareness Culture
By taking small, everyday actions, you can help reduce risk and strengthen your own as well as your clients’ security posture. Here are four simple but impactful tips to follow:
No. 1: Prioritize Social Engineering Education
Social engineering is when adversaries trick people into doing something they shouldn’t. This is one of the most common methods that threat actors use to target people. Email-based phishing, text-based smishing, and voice-based vishing are the three most common social engineering attacks. Technology alone can only go so far in stopping them.
Jim MacBride
Common clues of social engineering can include when messages have a sense of excessive urgency, pressure and curiosity, followed by inquiries for sensitive information. Educating employees on these strategies and how they can compromise private data is essential to building security awareness culture.
No. 2: Use Strong Passwords
Passwords enable users to access important accounts and data, making them attractive targets to attackers. To protect important data, steer clear of password reuse, use passphrases, and employ password managers.
No. 3: Turn on MFA
Multifactor authentication (MFA) guards data against password exploitation. Enable MFA on all your online accounts that offer it, especially email, social media, and financial accounts. The more factors you use or the stronger the factor, the better your security. This is typically done through:
- An extra PIN (personal identification number)
- An additional code, either emailed or texted
- A biometric identifier like facial recognition or a fingerprint
- A unique number generated by an “Authenticator App”
No. 4: Require Software Updates
When devices, apps or software programs indicate that updates are available, install them as soon as possible. Updates close security code bugs to better protect our data. Turn on automatic updates to make it even easier.
People have become the primary attack vector for cyber threat actors around the world. As a result, people — rather than technology — represent the greatest risk to organizations.
Internal Cybersecurity Risk Awareness is Key
It’s critical to implement cybersecurity plans and processes to protect and maintain business operations. As IT increasingly integrates with all aspects of our lives, there is increased risk for wide-scale events that could cause harm or disrupt services. Cyberattacks can result in serious ramifications for the impacted organization — and the public.
Developing a culture of security awareness among employees distributes the responsibility of maintaining a secure environment across the entire workforce. It makes the organization as a whole better prepared for any cyber threats.
Jim MacBride is senior director, business development for TD SYNNEX.
Featured image: iStock
