How to Sell Cybersecurity to Your Management Team

Getting your management team concerned about cybersecurity is a difficult task, especially if you are just starting. While the task may be daunting, it doesn’t change the fact that humans are your cybersecurity’s weakest points. A little misstep on a worker’s part, a click on a phishing link or connection of an infected flash drive and your wall of cybersecurity will come crashing down.

Taking active steps to make your management team become security-conscious will be worth every ounce of effort and money the process will cost. As IT manager, it’s your duty to create and promote cybersecurity awareness within the organization. But, how do you get people concerned when even the management isn’t willing to listen? It may look tough, but with a few tips, everything sure becomes easier.

1. Make Your Messages Stick

Forgetfulness is part of human nature. We hear something, get excited about it, and, then, thrust it to the back of our mind. Eventually, we forget about it. Although it’s a very natural process, forgetfulness has wreaked more havoc on businesses than you can imagine.

The first step in getting your management team concerned about cybersecurity is combating the urge to forget about it. You must make your messages stick, and make sure they don’t go in one ear and out the other.

There are many ways to do this. The first is to treat cybersecurity like a marketing campaign — you persuade. Once you get this, everything else becomes easier. Think of the ways you can sell cybersecurity to your management team.

You may start with a few videos that contain good infographics. Figures always tell a story, so give your employees some statistics to work with. Make sure, however, you can back each up with an interesting story – one that arouses curiosity is best. Don’t make the mistake of sending out long memos — no one will read them.

Need some ideas to get persuasive data? Here’s 3 of them:

• In 2017, Google released a great research paper on data breaches, phishing and malware. Their findings give you great statistics on the magnitude of the problem and how your business might be most vulnerable.
• Driving the message home is as easy as showing management that your business’ emails and passwords are already for sale on the dark web- See #3. Run a dark web scan for your organization and show the results to management.
• Verizon’s yearly Data Breach Investigations Report is also a great resource to illustrate trends on how hackers target businesses of all sizes and highlight where your organization’s cybersecurity gaps might be.

2. Bring Up the Issue Frequently

One way to get to your management team about cybersecurity is to talk about it frequently. You can use many ways to find opportunities to talk about cybersecurity. Did you just read a story about a cyber breach that’s affected a business? Share the story with your management team and let them understand how they can also become victims if they don’t take active steps to seal up cracks in the business’ security walls. It’s not advisable to bring up such issues frequently without relating it to current discussions — that will only make you look too desperate.

You might be interested in our post: Is It Time for Your Business to Get an IT Security Audit?>>

 

3. Prove Your Security Vulnerabilities to Them

How do really drive a point home? I mean, how do you really make people understand the consequences of a situation? Yeah, right. You prove it to them. Not just by word of mouth. Get them in the field and show them the vulnerability. Let them really understand how easy it’ll be for a hacker to get a hold of data if they don’t take active steps to build strong cybersecurity towers around the company.

A good way to start is probably by sending out a simulated phishing e-mail campaign. This will help you discover the weak links — those who click on the e-mails — and how you can help straighten it out.

4. Work with A Third-Party Security Company

Bringing in a third-party cybersecurity company will not only improve your business security but will only make your management team feel more concerned about security. Your management team will feel it’s a big problem and will be anxious to implement security systems.

You may want to get a third-party security company that can help enlighten your management team about various cyber threats, such as e-mail phishing, password safety, etc., and how very vulnerable most employees are to cyberattacks.

Security consciousness won’t happen in a day. That’ll require a miracle. Security training is a lifelong process. It requires a variety of lessons, presentations, and innovations to keep your management team on their toes. Although it’s a long process, the returns are often worth the effort.

How Envision Consulting Can Help

Envision specializes on helping businesses of all sizes implement proactively managed cybersecurity best practices, through multi-layered security solutions including: Network and Endpoint protection, Threat Monitoring, Detection and Response (SIEM and SOC), and Cybersecurity and Compliance Assessments. If your organization is in need of guidance implementing a robust IT security practice to minimize the risk of data breaches and would like to learn more about how we can help, all you need to do is Contact Us to schedule a consultation call with a member of our team.

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