How to Build a Culture of Cyber Security for Your Business?

During the pandemic, a company’s online presence and cybersecurity have become critical success factors. Almost all major corporations worldwide chose to work remotely, and many continue to use a remote-working or hybrid model today. As a result, the number of employees who use the internet to access their corporate accounts from home has skyrocketed.

While having a healthy cybersecurity culture at your workplace has always been important, this need has become even more pronounced since the outbreak of the healthcare pandemic and its aftermath.

Cybersecurity training for employees was typically a top priority for cyber-focused businesses. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has made this aspect of cybersecurity more important as well. The pandemic, its physical manifestations, the loss of loved ones, and feelings of isolation have made the global workforce’s emotional state a critical point of focus.

The COVID-19 environment’s insecurity, fear, anxiety, and uncertainty have increased the likelihood of cyber security incidents. The reason is simple: most cyber attacks and large-scale ransomware attacks begin with an unintentional human error. When the workforce is in emotional and physical turmoil, the number of human errors increases. According to Interpol, the number of ransomware attacks has increased dramatically as the attack surface has grown and cyber defenses have weakened as a result of the health crisis

However, as the world appears to have created new work paradigms and enterprises around the world have realized that they will have to work with pandemic conditions in the future, now is the ideal time to reinvigorate your cybersecurity culture and strengthen good cyber practices within the organization.

The process of increasing employee awareness of cyber threats and involving them in the problem should be consistent. The most effective approach would be to invest gradually in the development of cyber security culture today in order to avoid potential risks tomorrow. It’s no surprise, then, that the global cybersecurity market is expected to grow to 345.4 billion US dollars by 2026, according to Statista.

Here are some ideas for creating long-lasting and effective cyberculture in your workplace so that your company is as safe from cybercrime as possible:

1. Focus on the Ultimate Defense: When it comes to establishing an effective cyber security culture, your company’s people are the most valuable resource. The majority of cyber attacks begin with phishing emails inviting your employees to unknowingly endanger the company’s security by leaking sensitive data or compromising privileged credentials.

To protect your business from cybercriminals, you can rely solely on people and their understanding of the negative consequences of such actions. Your coworkers are your last line of defense. This is why employee cybersecurity training is so important today high-quality cybersecurity training courses, such as the NCSC-Certified Cyber Incident Planning & Response Course, assist non-technical staff in understanding the consequences of their actions as well as the actions they should take in real-time in the event of a security event.

A good cybersecurity training session should be interactive and encourage staff members to ask as many questions about security risks, data breaches, and organizational security solutions as they can think of.

Developing simple incident response plans and sharing ransomware response checklists with key decision-makers and business stakeholders is a good place to start. To make reporting suspicious activity easier, consider creating a web form that is simple to fill out if something occurs. Many email clients include phishing reporting buttons that function similarly to spam reporting. The goal is to provide your employees with a quick and secure way to report malfunctions.

2. Organize the Process: It’s an outmoded way of thinking to place sole responsibility for cybersecurity on the IT team. Security is recognized as a business concern, not just an IT concern, in today’s businesses. As a result, developing a cyber-focused internal culture should be viewed as an HR and executive mandate. Everyone who uses the company account has an interest in the organization’s cybersecurity, and this is where the culture-building process should begin.

Focus on making processes that are easy to use for your employees. Understandably, the faster response to a cyber-attack, the greater the likelihood of mitigating the potential damage. In addition, everyone should feel comfortable approaching you or their supervisor if something unexpected occurs.

Apart from providing your employees with the algorithm of actions to take when confronted with various types of cyber risks, the first thing they need to feel good about is admitting their actions that led to this issue. Public shaming is never part of a successful strategy. Instead, you can encourage people by celebrating successful cases.

3. Be Consistent: The importance of providing specific information about cyber risks to your employees on a regular basis is not the only thing to keep in mind. It is also critical to keep these messages consistent. For example, the password policy should be clearly understood.

Is it necessary to change passwords every 30 days or only when a breach occurs? What is the ideal number of characters for a strong password? What characters should be included: letters, numbers, and/or symbols? It will be extremely difficult for employees not to become confused if the answers to these questions change every other month.

Additionally, the fundamentals of cloud security, data security, endpoint security, and network security should be explained to staff.

The analogy is straightforward: when the rules of computational operations change all the time, even the most talented Maths tutors will be unable to assist you in obtaining the correct answer. Avoid using contradictory messages. The easier it is for employees to remember the key points of your company’s security protection and policies, the better they will apply them on a daily basis.

In conclusion

In the current threat landscape, it is impossible to overestimate the importance of a good cybersecurity culture for your business. Assessing employees’ security awareness is one of the first steps you can take toward creating this culture. You can decide what to do next based on the results. Investing in high-quality cybersecurity training, developing Incident Response Plans and Playbooks, and then testing these plans with Hacktechmedia is always a good place to start. Build on