How Cyber Security Awareness Training Can Benefit Your Business

Whatever your business offers, there are many types of security that you might need to consider, but aside from burglar alarms and CCTV, one of the most important measures that you now need to put in place is cyber security. With more and more attacks on businesses coming from the online world, it is more important than ever before that you protect your business from cyber criminals.

There are lots of ways that you can do this and many different programs and pieces of technology that you can implement, but one of the most crucial things that you can do is to educate your staff on the risks that you are facing.

Your employees can be the front line when it comes to protecting your business, and by giving them the right training, you can help to minimise the success that cyber criminals can have.

What is cyber security awareness training?

The staff that you employ will all have varying degrees of knowledge when it comes to technology and the cyber threats that your business faces, and this can mean that you have vulnerabilities. Cyber security awareness training helps everyone in your business understand and identify the risks in order to then avoid them and mitigate them.

Cyber criminals are extremely clever, and they know exactly what they need to target. They will often aim at smaller businesses as they believe that their technology and their practices will not be as robust as their bigger counterparts and will therefore be easier to crack.

As 70% of data breaches in 2023 involved a human element, it is easy to see why they will be waiting for a mistake from someone in your organisation to give them a way in. Despite these alarming figures, it is estimated that as little as 11% of businesses actually offer a cyber security awareness program to their employees, which means that they are leaving themselves open to attack.

The risks of a cyber attack

For a small business, the risks associated with a cyber attack can be massive. Data is now one of the most valuable assets that your business owns and so most attacks are targeted at this. Cyber attacks will aim to steal this data, usually so it can be sold on or used to create false identities and commit fraud.

This is likely to be the data of your customers, and so when it happens, the reputational damage can be huge and the ICO might also decide to impose some hefty fines. To add insult to injury, many attackers also remove the data that you have collected from your system, making it harder for your business to function.

In other instances, hackers may want to do things such as redirect your website to something else or intercept your payment gateways. On some occasions, they might take over your online presence entirely or install a virus in your network that can bring your business to a grinding halt.

All of these options are frankly terrifying for most businesses and they can be extremely difficult to recover from, which is why it is vital to do all you can to protect yourself from it.

Data breaches and phishing attacks

One of the most important things that security awareness training can do is to help prevent data breaches. We have all seen those emails that might pretend to be from a bank or another trusted site asking you to click a link and verify your details. These are known as phishing attacks and are intended to look like the real deal to trick you into entering sensitive information such as passwords that hackers can then use to access your systems.

Security awareness training can help your employees to know what to look out for, so that they can spot these scams and not fall victim to them. It can help them to know what action to take if they are not sure whether something is genuine, and can help reduce the risk of a breach massively.

Security culture

Not everyone is aware of the risks faced by cyber criminals, and so optimum security measures are not always something that they think about. By putting everyone through security awareness training, you can create a culture where it is in the minds of every employee, ensuring that they are always vigilant and on the lookout for attacks.

Increasing your defences

You can put a huge range of technological defences in place to protect your business from cyber threats, but they will still need some form of human interaction for them to work. For example, firewalls are only successful if they are turned on, virus protection only works if it is updated and passwords only protect if they are strong and not shared.

Security awareness training makes all of your employees aware of their responsibilities and ensures that they do not rest on their laurels waiting for the technology to do all of the work. It ensures that everyone knows what is required of them to keep the systems running at their best, and allows them to work with the technology that you use to make it more effective.

Reputation with customers

The general public are increasingly aware of the risks they face every time they give their data to another business. It is therefore important that you do all that you can to reassure your existing ones and any potential new ones that you have taken every measure to protect your business and your clients data. By demonstrating that you have security awareness training in place, you can show that you have covered all bases so that customers can feel comfortable working with you.

Cyber security is now an important consideration for every business, but without security awareness training only half the job is done. Security awareness training can ensure that everyone in the business has the same level of understanding and that they can all take steps to keep your business and its customers as safe as possible.