1. Imagine if you couldn’t access your computer systems or data. It could lead to an existential threat. Unfortunately, many companies have already gone bankrupt after cyber attacks (e.g. Bicycle manufacturer Prophete, KNP Logistics, Financial services company Travelex, Cloud Nordic, window manufacturer Swiss Windows).
2. That’s why prevention is necessary. One key element of required measures: Cybersecurity awareness training. It can help your small business withstand cyber risks.
3. As a small business, you interact daily with your team, customers, potential customers, vendors, government agencies, and many other stakeholders. Organizations don’t operate in bubbles.
4. To build and maintain these relationships, digital communication channels are essential. We can’t avoid using the internet or email; it’s a business necessity to stay connected and reachable.
5. While these tools are useful, they leave your business exposed and vulnerable. That’s because malicious actors also use these channels for their fraud attempts.
6. As long as humans use computers and apps, we are targets because every good hacker knows it’s easier to hack humans than systems. This fact is underscored by the FBI Internet Crime Report, which states that fraud attempts via email (phishing) are the top crime type.
7. In other words, cyber risks are unavoidable. The good news is that it’s a risk you can do something about.
RISKS FOR SMES ARE INCREASING
1. Two recent findings:
o 94% of SMES have experienced at least one cyberattack.
o An employee at a small business with fewer than 100 employees will face 350% more social engineering attacks than an employee at a larger enterprise.
2. One of the major reasons is the limited resources that SMEs possess. Unlike enterprises, they typically don’t have the time, people, or money to invest in their cybersecurity measures.
3. Since the pandemic, larger organizations have increased their risk awareness and made significant efforts to upgrade their resilience.
4. Today, enterprises have sophisticated security measures in place, whereas small businesses do not. According to Europol, the law enforcement agency of the European Union, these lower cyber defenses have increasingly made small and medium-sized businesses a target.
5. SMEs are not only targets themselves. They also serve as entry points for larger supply chain attacks aimed at hacking into their larger customers’ systems.
6. Last but not least, underdeveloped risk awareness and culture often pose a significant danger. Avoid falling into the following traps.
HOW TO DO CYBER SECURITY AWARENESS TRAINING FOR SMALL BUSINESSES
1. When implementing cybersecurity awareness training, remember that it’s not an IT course. Security awareness training is similar to media literacy, which involves understanding various communication channels. When you watch a movie, you only need to know that a background or object might be created by a computer. You don’t need to know how to use a greenscreen or animation program.
2. Remember the pandemic? Sneezing into your elbow became natural, even though it was rare before COVID-19. You didn’t need to study biology or medicine to adopt this habit; you just needed to know why it was beneficial for you and your environment.
3. In the same way, your employees don’t need to become IT experts. They just need to understand the basic principles of cybersecurity and recognize potential threats. Here are some key steps to effectively conduct cybersecurity awareness training for your small business
4. Focus on the Essential Risks - Generally speaking, security awareness training for small businesses should include as much as needed but as little as possible. It should address the major risks without any fluff. Read more about required and optional security awareness training topics.
5. Get Expert Knowledge you can Customize - The content you share should be based on research and experience to ensure it is trustworthy and up-to-date. However, since every business is different, you might want to customize the security awareness training content to fit your needs. With egghead, the digital assistant for security awareness, you get ready-made content that you can customize with AI.
6. Keep it as Short as Possible The staff is busy. Who can afford to be away from their main duties for hours or even days to learn about cyber risks? Cybersecurity awareness training for small businesses needs to be as short as possible, delivering key information in just a few minutes.
7. Make it Relevant and Engaging - To show staff what’s in it for them, position security awareness training differently: it’s not just something they do for work, but a skill that helps them in their private lives when surfing the web and using apps. This adds relevance.
8. To further increase it, keep the content simple. Make it interactive and relatable with real-life examples. Sprinkle in some humor to make it more fun. When you use eggheads for your security awareness training, the AI even delivers personalized feedback to participants based on their responses.
9. Keep Security Top of Mind Year-Round - While you might have annual security awareness training in place, it rarely leads to sustainable behavior change. There are two major reasons for this. First, human brains are not designed to absorb too much information at once. Second, people forget about 90% of what they hear within a week. That’s why regular reinforcement and reminders are essential to maintain vigilance (read more about refresher training in general).
10. Weave Training Seamlessly into Work - You likely already have various internal communication channels. Avoid getting a new app, intranet site or other standalone solution that ends up as a new silo. Instead, reach and engage staff where they already are with an integrated solution like the egghead, a digital assistant for security awareness.
11. It’s a Microsoft Teams app that turns your central hub of communication and collaboration into a training tool. By reducing barriers, you create a seamless and convenient experience that increases engagement.
12. Just-in-Time Support - Regardless of how engaged and motivated your team is, they might forget some things from training. Training often involves learning information that isn’t immediately needed, so it gets forgotten.
13. A digital assistant like the egghead not only shares helpful knowledge proactively but is also there when staff need quick answers to things they already learned. How long should a password be? Am I allowed to use a certain web service?
Source:
https://eggheads.ai/cyber-security-awareness-training-for-small-business/
