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Protecting your business from cyberattacks is one of the most important things you can do to help your company grow and thrive for years to come. Implementing proactive cybersecurity measures is key to forming this protection, but making your organization truly safe requires an additional step.
Creating a security culture among team members that’s focused on safeguarding online data and systems is absolutely essential for a complete cybersecurity web. Today, we’re looking at how you can help each employee, from managers to interns, get involved in keeping your organization secure.
Why Is a Strong Online Security Culture Important?
It’s estimated that anywhere from 88–95% of data breaches are due to employee error. That means that, even with state-of-the-art cybersecurity measures, your business isn’t safe if each team member isn’t involved in security.
This culture of safety and awareness will protect your sensitive data, prevent expensive downtime, and maintain your customer trust—helping you stay resilient and competitive in the fast-paced business world.
What Does “Cybersecurity Culture” Really Mean?
“Cybersecurity culture” refers to how the members of an organization view and approach cybersecurity. It includes the policies, procedures, and goals implemented by those in leadership positions, but it’s really all about people. Each team member must individually care about cybersecurity and make efforts to keep data and systems safe.
Developing this culture takes time and effort, but it’s well worth it for the additional protection and peace of mind.
How Can I Get My Team on Board?
This mindset of awareness and security is best developed by encouraging individual team members to do their part to make your business safer. Here are a few ideas to get everyone involved.
Get Executive Support
The first step when launching any sort of culture campaign is securing support from the higher-ups. Their endorsement legitimizes the initiative, shows business priorities, and motivates other team members to get involved and take cybersecurity seriously. This support also means that you’ll get the resources, policies, and time you need for your culture program.
Lead At All Levels
Executive support is crucial for an effective security culture movement, but involving staff at all levels is just as important. Those in leadership positions should recognize good examples and be willing to accept feedback and answer questions from all team members. Everyone should feel free to share ideas for improving cybersecurity.
Hold Engaging Training Regularly
Frequent training is the best way to keep your team informed about cybersecurity. Try different delivery methods to find what works best for your business, such as in-person meetings, newsletters, posters, modules, security minutes at the beginning of other meetings, etc. Make training more interesting with real-world stories, games, and a variety of materials and activities.
Explain the Why
Be sure to include the reasoning behind different cybersecurity practices and policies during training. Sharing stories and simple explanations of different hacking techniques/security systems will help your team understand why cybersecurity is important and help them feel motivated to follow best practices.
Make Procedures Clear
Make sure policies and responsibilities are clearly defined and assigned to each team member. This reduces the “not my job” mentality and the risk of unintentional insider threats. It also helps team members feel needed and like their contributions to the culture are important—because they are.
Integrate Cybersecurity into Daily Operations
Incorporate awareness into your daily operations with security reminders and updates in regular team meetings and communications. Encourage employees to perform quick, daily security checks, such as verifying email sources before clicking on links or attachments. By helping your team think about cybersecurity daily, they’ll be more prepared to respond to incidents.
Create a Positive Security Culture
Creating a positive association with cybersecurity awareness, reporting, and practices is key to helping your team want to be involved. Make reporting suspicious activity simple so employees won’t feel hassled or inconvenienced, frame cybersecurity incidents as learning opportunities, and help team members feel comfortable to ask questions and learn.
Cultivate a Culture of Awareness with Twintel
A strong cybersecurity culture is best complimented by a strong technical infrastructure. With Twintel, you’ll get proactive solutions and tools from a team that’s focused on efficiency, professionalism, and your business’s success. Set up a time to meet with us and see the Twintel difference for yourself.
Twintel has grown into an expansive, full team of IT services professionals, acting as the outsourced IT department of non-profits, small to mid-size businesses, and enterprise-level corporations in Orange County, across California, and nationally.
Today, it’s the strength and deep expertise of the Twintel team that drives positive outcomes for clients. Each of the support staff, technicians, and engineers works diligently each day to make sure that the companies served have the seamless, secure, and stable IT environments needed to allow them to pursue their organizational objectives.
