How To Enhance Your Cybersecurity Training

Read Time: 3 minutes

We’ve all seen it in the news or heard it through a colleague: there are constant cybersecurity risks.

Believe it or not, one email can cost your organization millions of dollars. One employee’s misjudgment of a phishing request can deliver some of the most valuable information directly to hackers. Mitigating the risk of phishing attacks will save your company from significant financial loss.

This article will review what a phishing scam is, then provide 5 tips for keeping your organization and employees safe from phishing scams. 

What Is A Phishing Scam?

Phishing is the illegal practice of sending emails that induce individuals to reveal personal information, such as company secrets, passwords, financials, and credit card numbers. As employees become more immune to phishing attacks – quickly spotting a misspelled line, urgent request, or unfamiliar email address – attacks grow more and more sophisticated.

So, how are you training your employees to protect them, and your organization, from phishing attacks? We’ve put together 5 tips for training your team and protecting your assets.

Justify The Expense

Developing a comprehensive phishing training program is more expensive than doing nothing, but the training could pay for itself by preventing one attack. The average large organization spends $3.7 million a year on dealing with phishing attacks, a number that could be shaved down by $1.8 million with the right training.

Close The Skills Gap

The scope of traditional phishing attacks will continue to change shape. Training your employees, particularly those who deal with sensitive information, will require consistent evaluation of your training topics.

Simulate Attacks

Test your employees. Your IT department can create a fake phishing scam to test your employees, then collect data about who opened the email, clicked the fake link, and compromised your organization’s information. Then, you can provide targeted training to employees who may need remedial courses.

Read More: 4 Benefits Of A Custom Training Program

Extend And Reinforce Training

Most cybersecurity training is built into onboard training during an employee’s first week on the job. With all the other information your new employees are learning, will they recall that single phishing warning?

Extend your phishing training and simulations to your entire workforce and adapt it to encompass new phishing methods. Test your employees frequently and monitor their comprehension of the subject. Perform pre- and post-assessments to ensure that employees won’t fall prey to increasingly sophisticated phishing attempts.

Customize Training

While off-the-shelf training can train learners about the importance of cybersecurity, customized training will help your employees understand how phishing directly affects your organization and your environment.

Customized training can include specific phishing email attempts that have been sent to your employees in the past. By using your organization’s brand and email format, employees will retain the lessons and recall them when they see similar phishing attempts in their inbox.

Click below to see a sample Phishing eLearning Module:

Proactively Prepare To Avoid Phishing Scams

We’ve developed customized cybersecurity courses for large companies, which drastically reduce the chances of phishing success, malware, and financial loss. Talk to one of our experts today to see a sample course and learn how we can partner with you to protect your employees and your assets.