Cyber risk is a prevalent issue for businesses everywhere. It is the second most reported economic crime affecting 32% of organizations. The current state of cyber security offers a miserable picture of security professionals attempting and failing to secure their networks. All companies follow their own unique cyber security strategies that are inadequate by all means. It is an unstable situation that both the security professionals and hackers are aware of.
There are multiple tools available in the market that security professionals can use. However, they’re extremely diverse and largely irrelevant. Most security professionals will choose a cybersecurity solution randomly to protect company networks and call it a day, hoping it would survive.
Human Error Tops It All
Simply loading up on technological resources in the company will not secure the network, particularly when the problem lies with the people. There’s only so much a technical product can do. They’re no match for issues instigated by people.
Almost 95% of cybercrime cases occur due to the risk posed by innocent and unintentional human error. Traditional training methods aimed at addressing this issue will least likely deliver the intended results. There’s a pressing need to devise and implement techniques that are better tailored to the uninformed non-technical audiences working all over the company.
What can Security Professionals Do?
First and foremost, security professionals need to understand and accept the fact that their IT infrastructure is only as strong as the people in it. Instead of relying solely on technological barricades, they need to focus on training human resources in a way that wards off technical threats automatically.
But before that is possible, they need to reinforce the importance of cybersecurity to all the employees across the company. Unless employees have a reason, a motivation, to take security concerns seriously, they will continue to make simple blunders that may cost companies billions of dollars. There’s a need for smarter training and developing better content that connects with the audience.
What’s lacking in Traditional Training Programs?
There are two factors that make up an effective training program – great content and valuable insights. Most companies would focus on one of these two, which in turn diminishes the quality of training. Companies need not only to stress their protocols regarding cybersecurity but also understand the behavior of employees to influence them in a better manner.
For the most part, mistakes can happen by anyone across the company. So there’s no specific target audience when it comes to tailoring your training program. However, as attention spans and retention decreases overall, it poses a bigger challenge in the form of creating attention-grabbing content that is easy to remember. Even if the topic of cybersecurity is uninteresting, companies can’t afford to make their training programs as such.
Another important part of these training programs is measuring success. Unless there are clearly defined analytics dimensions that state how the training programs are supposed to be evaluated and improved, there’s no point in conducting training that will surely be forgotten.
What Do The Companies Stand To Gain By Reducing Human Error?
Reducing human error will save both time and money for the company. Cleaning up the aftermath of a cybercrime is typically an expensive and time-consuming task. If companies, through their training programs, can get their employees to think carefully about their IT decisions, it can reduce the possibility of a security breach significantly, eventually saving the company from unnecessary losses.
Security professionals need to take this concern seriously and invest some time every day in tackling known instances of employee negligence. This will not only limit human error but also enable the security professional to apportion time efficiently and achieve optimal levels of security effectively. Overlooking the problem in any case will further deteriorate the security condition at work.
