Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) often work with a small team, and employees may wear many hats. Resources are typically spread pretty thin just by performing tasks associated with everyday business. Expecting these companies to dedicate time and expertise to create a robust cyber security training program may seem improbable. However, the potential for an SMB to be the victim of a cyber attack is higher than you might assume. Criminals target these smaller organizations because they do not have the sophisticated security of large companies. Therefore SMBs need to find a way to incorporate cyber security training into their workplace.
Here are some best practices for developing an effective awareness training program in your SMB:
- Analyze Your Company’s Security Culture: This exercise aims to learn more about your company’s unique culture and assess your employee’s understanding of cyber security risks.
You’ll need to identify the amount of risk associated with the security behaviors of your people and determine if their actions and behaviors could present a threat to operations or assets. Phishing, ransomware, and other malware attacks often come through electronic communications masquerading as standard email. The trick is to identify their actual behaviors versus their own account of what they are doing. - Create a Cyber Security Training Plan: Once you understand your situation and have identified available resources, you’ll need to create a project plan. This plan should outline the skills your personnel need to learn and the behaviors and attitudes they should adopt.
First, identify the cyber security training objectives, then break down each goal into more manageable components. - Execute the Plan: There is no simple template solution for cybersecurity training. You may need to try several options until you find the best strategy for your company. It’s vital not to cut corners during the process, as each is essential to achieving your goals. Be sure to:
- Initiate communication with all personnel about the new training program.
- Add cyber security training to all onboarding/orientation training.
- Choose (or create) a learning management system to help deliver course materials.
- Based on their responsibilities, develop content that relates to and engages your employees.
- Keep your training materials updated as cyber security threats evolve rapidly.
- Evaluate the Effectiveness of your Program: Once the cyber security training program is complete, you’ll need to determine its effectiveness in boosting your employees’ knowledge of cybersecurity threats and how to act to protect the company. Employees should be able to demonstrate their new behaviors, procedures, and understanding. Assess each employee’s knowledge of (and compliance with) company security policies before and after training.
- Edit and Update When Necessary: As with all facets of technology, cybersecurity threats evolve all the time, so you should routinely assess and update your cyber security training program. Your employees’ feedback will be constructive in these revisions – they can tell you if a topic is too complex, if it doesn’t make sense in their workflow, or if it doesn’t address a daily problem. After you’ve evaluated the employee learning process, you’ll be able to determine the parts of the curriculum that were useful and which need improvement.
Alliance IT Can Help
Developing a successful cyber security training program for your staff requires a delicate balance – on the one hand, it needs to be straightforward enough that they will all be able to complete it quickly. Still, you also want them to learn everything they need to to prevent data breaches and cyber-attacks.
If you need help developing a program that can teach your team about the cyber-security risks they face – and how to change their behavior to stop them in their tracks – call Alliance IT today.
