Security Awareness
BUILD BETTER BUSINESS PROCESSES THAT ARE SECURE BY DESIGN
In today’s digital world, security is a huge issue, especially when it comes to business’s IT security. With the development of new technology, hackers have been able to create viruses and security breaches on a much larger scale. Many security breaches would have been able to be stopped if businesses simply had better security, as well as increased the security awareness of their employees and authorized users.
Understand Security Awareness
Security issues can happen much more easily when security awareness is lacking in an organization. Security awareness is both a simple and extremely complex topic. It’s something that’s often thought about in the context of IT, but it could also be applied to anyone working for any organization—even outside of the realm of technology.
Understanding what security awareness is can help us build better business processes that are secure by design, rather than focusing on just building millions of lines of code.
First, let’s look at what security awareness is not:
Security awareness isn’t just about training employees to act in a secure manner; for example, it doesn’t make sense to tell someone who works in the mailroom that they should never open an email attachment unless they know exactly what it is and where it came from. Yes, it’s important to understand email fishing—but they’re also not likely to fall for this type of attack because it doesn’t really apply to them.
This is something that’s not limited by job title, department, or even an employee’s security clearance level.
5 Ways to Get Started
So how do we go about building a corporate culture of security awareness? Here are five ways to get started:
1. Think about the environment you work in
We all have a particular working culture, including company-wide policies and procedures that have been built over time by management to increase employee safety, productivity, efficiency, etc. These are all things that employees deal with on a daily basis – whether they think about them or not. It’s important that we take the same process and apply it to security as well.
2. Implement low-cost, high-benefit awareness exercises
One of the best things about turning your attention to corporate culture is that it’s something you can introduce at a low cost and with great benefit. Some ideas include:
Some ideas include:
a) Weekly or monthly security updates and reminders via email, with links to more information
b) Providing a safe place for employees to ask questions about phishing attacks and other cyberattacks and how they work
c) Turning your security awareness training into company-wide events where everyone can raise their hand and participate
d) Regular social engineering testing (more on that below)
3. Make security awareness part of your employee’s job
There are a number of tools and exercises you can implement that will help keep employees informed. When you’re building a training course, there should be a section where participants learn about these tools and what they do—many times it’s not even information security related! For example, when was the last time you checked to see if the program you have opened is the latest version, even if it says it’s up to date? This can help remind employees what they need to do.
4. Remember that culture isn’t something you build overnight.
Think of security awareness as you would any technology product—it needs to be tested, retested, and then put through trials with focus groups made up of your employees before you roll it out on a large scale.
With these four steps, you’ll be on your way to a more secure environment for all of your employees. This is something that every company needs to incorporate into their existing corporate culture – no matter what type of business they’re in.
5. Let Envision Help Your Business to Build Better Security Awareness
Envision Consulting will help keep your business safe through improving security awareness and providing solutions. We offer security training for your employees, as well security consulting services to ensure that security measures are up to date and working. With security awareness in your team, you can keep the threats out.
Ready to Build Security Awareness?
For security awareness training, security consulting services, or security software, contact Envision IT Solutions today! We are security experts who want to help your business fix security issues. To learn more about how Envision Consulting can improve your business’s security awareness, contact us today!
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Whether you need immediate help with an IT issue or want to discuss your long-term IT strategy, our team is here to help.
Call us at (703) 935-4676 or complete the form below and we'll help in any way we can.
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