October is the European Cyber Security Awareness Month. This initiative sets out to raise awareness of cyber security threats, promote cyber security among citizens and organisations; and provide resources to protect themselves online. Cyber security is moving up the boardroom agenda, as the government’s Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2019 reveals that 32% of UK businesses and 22% of UK charities identified cyber security breaches or attacks in the last twelve months.
This blog post discusses four ways that you can promote the importance of cyber security within your business or workplace.
We previously discussed Top Six Cyber Tips for your Business. Although these are just basic tips, they can be used as a good starting point.
Get Buy-in from Management
It shouldn’t be difficult to get the support of management or business owners with high-profile cyber security cases such as British Airways and Facebook hitting the news. Combined with the startling statistics that surround cyber security and small business. By getting buy-in from management you can ensure that cyber security is a high priority within the workplace and means that the importance of cyber security is communicated with authority.
Document Security Policies
By documenting security policies you can help to ensure that everyone is aware of what is expected of them, what the best practice is and how best to guarantee that they are sharing and accessing company information securely. This documentation should be easily accessed so that team members can check aspects of it as they need to.
Encourage your Employees to Report Suspected Security Threats
A threat can easily go unnoticed, being aware of the threat as soon as possible or as soon as details have been leaked, means that processes can be put in place to limit any damage caused, as well contacting, if required, any customers or suppliers who have been affected. We are only human so mistakes can happen, but removing a blame culture helps to ensure that employees are open and honest about mistakes and therefore management can react quickly to resolve the issue.
Train your Team
A very important part of promoting cyber security is training throughout the whole company, as unfortunately, humans remain the weakest link in protecting your business against cyber security attacks.
A key area to be aware of is email communications, employees should not open emails from unknown senders, nor should they download attachments or click on links, unless they know the sender and have checked the email address is correct. Cyber security attacks are getting harder to spot, as cyber criminals often use email addresses and URLs that are very similar to legitimate ones.
Employees should also be wary of requests from senior management for urgent transfer of funds or purchases of gift cards. By ensuring that your team know what to look out for and are able to challenge these types of you requests you are putting processes in place to help protect your business.
These are just a few examples of how to promote the importance of cyber security, the Cyber Security Awareness Month initiative has a whole host of resources that are free to download and an interactive quiz to gauge the knowledge of cyber security within your team.