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How do you raise cybersecurity awareness?

9 August, 2023
BMaarten de Bakker from CaptureTech
Maarten de Bakker
Cybersecurity awareness for employees
9 August, 2023
Maarten de Bakker

Unfortunately, cyber attacks are becoming more common. Every 11 seconds, a company or organization worldwide is hit by a ransomware attack, in which cybercriminals hold IT systems hostage. The total annual damage from cybercrime is 5,500 billion euros. On top of that, the impact of a hack on your organization is usually very large. From reputational damage and paying ransomware to secure your data to lost revenue by simply not being able to continue working. Furthermore, SMEs are increasingly affected precisely because they are often less well protected.

Why raise cyber awareness?

Of all those hacks, most of them were caused by wrongdoing by employees of the organization. One is often unconsciously incompetent. After clicking on a link or downloading the file, the hacker is ‘in’. So you can have everything tiptop secured, but when your colleagues fail to recognize a phishing email, for example, you’re still screwed. And those phishing emails are becoming more sophisticated.

Keep it simple

Thus, to prevent cyber attacks, it is more necessary than ever to focus on the human factor as well. But how do you create cyber awareness throughout your organization without taking up a lot of time from your employees?

Above all, keep it simple and don’t expect employees to sift through endless PDF files. After all, they have other things to do. A good way to impart knowledge in an approachable way is to work with bite-sized e-learnings. Once a week, have employees answer a number of questions digitally in a handy Cyber Academy tool in which you keep track of how far the employee has progressed.

 

Cybersecurity awareness with an academy

Phishing simulations

With regular phishing simulations, you can test whether your employees are susceptible to phishing. Those who do not recognize the phishing email and click on a link, for example, are followed up with explanations of what they should do better and they receive links to online training.

Employees can also report suspicious e-mails themselves with a button in Outlook or Webmail. As a result, in addition to cyber awareness, you create employee engagement. Moreover, Microsoft Defender gets smarter with each notification of such emails.

Reminders in the workplace

Another way to create (and maintain!) cybersecurity awareness among employees is to help remind them in a simple way what to look out for.

Mouse pad for cybersecurity awareness

Posters cyber awareness

For example, hang posters at workstations or place mouse pads on desks with a light-hearted or funny message about key cyber security tips.

Would you also like to hang these posters in your office? Request them from us without further obligations. While supplies last, we give them away for free. Please include in the email how many posters (up to 8) and what size (A2 or A3) you would like to receive them, and we will make sure they come your way.

Training videos

You can also make employees cyber-aware by sending them short training videos of no more than 5 minutes. This provides employees with an accessible explanation of what they themselves can do when it comes to cybersecurity, what they need to watch out for and what the consequences of their actions may be for the organization. Among other things, they are explained about phishing.

 

Learn more

Do you also want a Cyber Academy, posters, training videos or phishing simulations for your employees? Then contact us for a customized consultation.

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