Making real progress on changing employee behavior can be difficult. Employees need to be properly educated and security awareness needs to be driven by company culture.
A security breach could cost your organization millions!
All it takes is one employee to click a malicious link or unintentionally provide their credentials to a cybercriminal. This is why you need to make sure that all of your employees are well equipped with the knowledge that they need to protect your organization.
We hope this information helps you create a security-first culture.
Create a Security-First Culture in Your Organization
Building a security-first culture is critical for your organization. Make sure you acknowledge that each and every employee has a vital role in securing your organization. Encourage everyone to report security incidents and frequently remind employees how to report security incidents.
Create incentives for employees to participate. An example of this could be offering a monthly gift card drawing by randomly selecting one employee that reported a phishing email. The employee’s action to report the phishing email could be highlighted and shown that the proactive action led the security team to remove similar phishing emails from other employees’ mailboxes, potentially preventing a data breach.
Awareness Alone Is Not Enough
Have you ever wondered how a company that spends thousands of dollars on their security awareness program still has employees that click on links in phishing emails?
Many companies focus on providing security awareness but do not fully educate their employees. These companies fail to make the employees fully understand the importance of security.
Improve Employee Behavior
Security awareness needs to come from the top-down. All levels of management need to drive security awareness. It should not solely be one security manager’s responsibility to change employee behavior for the entire organization. Leadership-driven security awareness programs can be more effective and can help build a security-first culture across the entire organization.
Routinely Test the Effectiveness of Your Security Training
Deploying a phishing campaign can help test and measure the effectiveness of your security awareness program. After the phishing campaign, consider security training for all employees to help reinforce the importance of security. Also consider additional security training for any employees that fall for the phishing emails.
Track Your Metrics
Deploying routine tests can help track the effectiveness of your security awareness program. Once an initial baseline is determined, the organization can track the results over a period of time. Make sure that the metrics are clearly defined. Do not modify the numbers to make the security awareness program look more effective than it actually is to the board of directors. Believe it or not, this actually happens and can provide leadership with a false sense of security.
Make Improvements
If your results and metrics are not where your organization would like them, do not simply change the numbers in your metrics; constantly improve your security awareness program and your metrics should also improve.
Tracking your metrics can help identify departments or employees that may need additional security training. These metrics can also help you determine if your security awareness program is or is not working. If the metrics do not improve over time, you may need to consider revamping your security awareness program to ensure that it is effective and beneficial to the entire organization.
Require Independent Security Assessments
Many companies benefit from independent, third-party security assessments to help measure the true effectiveness of their security awareness program. Central InfoSec team members have helped organizations drop their click-rates drop from over 50% to less than 1%.
Free Consultation with Central InfoSec
Central InfoSec specializes in tailored phishing services, to help you test and measure the effectiveness of your security awareness program. By offering managed phishing services, your organization can receive tailored phishing campaigns, historical reporting, and metrics.
Central InfoSec also offers a variety of professional security services to help you test, measure, and improve your overall security posture. Security services offered include red teaming, penetration testing, vulnerability assessments, web application testing, managed phishing, and other tailored security services to help you reduce risk to your organization.