Cyber Security Culture
For Business

Cyber Security Culture For Business

The digital presence of any business and its cybersecurity have become crucial factors for success. Almost all well-known companies globally decided to switch to the option of remote work, and many are persisting in following a remote-working or a hybrid model consistent now. Consequently, the number of employees who use the internet to connect to their corporate accounts from home has increased dramatically.

While it was always necessary to have a robust cybersecurity culture at the workplace to secure the important data.

Cybersecurity training for staff was usually a high-priority item for cyber-focused businesses. Nevertheless, the COVID-19 pandemic has also made this aspect of cybersecurity more relevant. The pandemic, its physical manifestations, loss of loved ones, and feelings of isolation have made the emotional state of the global workforce a critical point of focus.

The instability, fear, anxiety, and uncertainty of the COVID-19 environment have resulted in a higher probability of cyber security events. The reason is simple: most cyberattacks and large-scale ransomware attacks have always started with an innocent human error. These human errors get exaggerated when the workforce is in a state of emotional and physical turmoil. According to Interpol, ransomware attacks have been growing as the attack surface increased and the level of cyber defenses weakened due to the health crisis.

However, as the world seems to have created new paradigms for work and enterprises across the globe have realized that they have to work with the pandemic conditions going forward, now is the perfect time to reinvigorate your cybersecurity culture and strengthen good cyber practices within the organization.

Increasing awareness of cyber threats and engaging employees in this problem should be consistent. The most effective approach would be to invest gradually in cyber security culture development today to avoid possible risks tomorrow. No wonder then that the expected growth of the global cybersecurity market size equals 345.4 billion U.S. in 2026, as per Statista.

How To Build Strong Cybersecurity Culture?

We’ve got some ideas about how you can build long-lasting and effective cyberculture within your workspace such that your business remains protected from cyber-crime as far as possible:

Focus on the Ultimate Defence:

The people in your company are the most valuable resource for establishing an influential cyber security culture. Most cyber-attacks start as phishing emails that invite your employees to unknowingly damage the company's safety by leaking out sensitive data or compromising privileged credentials.

Ironically enough, you can rely only on people and their understanding of the harmful consequences of such actions to protect your business from cybercriminals. The people you work with is your ultimate defense. This is why educating personnel in cybersecurity is indispensable today. High-quality cybersecurity training courses such as the NCSC-Certified Cyber Incident Planning & Response Course help non-technical staff understand the consequences of their actions and shed light on the actions they should take in real-time in case of a security event.

A good cybersecurity training session should be interactive and encourage the staff members to ask as many questions as possible about security risks, data breaches, and organizational security solutions.

Creating easy-to-follow incident response plans and sharing ransomware response checklists with the important decision-makers and business stakeholders is a great way to start. To make reporting suspicious activity easier, consider creating a web form that is easy to fill out if something happens. Many email clients can report phishing buttons that work in a similar way to spam reporting. The idea is to guarantee your employees the possibility of a fast and safe way of reporting malfunctions.

Organise the Process:

It is an outdated way of thinking that places the entire responsibility of cybersecurity on the IT team. Modern businesses recognize security as a business concern and not just an IT concern. Therefore, building a cyber-focussed internal culture should be an HR and executive mandate. Every person who uses the company account has a stake in organizational cybersecurity, and that is how the culture-building process should start.

Focus on creating user-friendly processes for your employees. Understandably, the faster the reaction to a cyber-attack, the higher the probability to lower the possible damage. Also, everyone should feel comfortable turning to you or their supervisor when something unexpected happens.

Apart from giving your employees the algorithm of actions when facing different types of cyber risks, the first thing that they need to feel good about is admitting their actions that led to facing this issue. Public punishment is never a part of an effective strategy. Celebrate successful cases to encourage people instead.

Be Consistent:

The significance of regularly providing your employees with specific information about cyber risks is not the only thing you need to keep in mind. It is also essential to make these messages consistent. There should be a clear understanding of the password policy, for instance.

Is it necessary to change passwords every 30 days or only in case of a breach? How many characters should a strong password have? What type of characters should be there: letters, numbers, and symbols? If the answers to these questions change every other month, it will be challenging for employees not to get confused.

Further, the basics of cloud security, data security, endpoint security, and network security should be explained to the staff, and their expectations regarding the same should be made very clear.

Avoid rejections in your messages. The more comfortable it is for the employees to remember the crucial points of your organization's security protection and policies, the better they will apply them every day.

Conclusion

It is unattainable to overrate the value of a good cybersecurity culture for your business in the current dangerous terrain. The first step toward building a secure culture is to provide security awareness to employees. Relying on the outcomes, then decide what to do next. Investing in high-quality cybersecurity training, building Incident Response Plans, and Playbooks, and then testing these plans with Cybersecurity Tabletop Exercises is always an excellent place to start with and build on.