Cyber Security Awareness Training for Employees – Sydney
Cyber Security Awareness training for Employees – Sydney
It is well known that human error is the leading cause of the vast majority of data breaches – and these breaches can result in significant financial and reputation damage for any organisation that falls prey to attack. The importance of cyber security awareness training for employees in Sydney is often underestimated by organisations and can lead them to breaches.
Identify Human Vulnerabilities
Your employees are the face of your organisation. They represent your company to customers and deal with personal and organisational information daily.
Networks are most commonly at risk at the crossing point between the intra- and internet. Your staff are the real-world equivalent to this, interacting with internal business processes and external customers.
This means that one of the most common methods for penetrating your corporation defences is by deceiving your staff.
Cyber security awareness training for staff is essential to educate employees and prevent data breaches caused by following procedures incorrectly. Adequate training will reduce organisational risk and keep your data safe from cyber-attacks. It is up to you, as a business leader, to ensure your staff are provided with appropriate training and that they are actively participating in the security of the private data that they curate.
The Top 4 Business Impacts of Cyber Security Breaches
Every company is different, storing data on a wide range of topics in various ways. When data breaches occur, their impact is unique to that organisation, dependant on the timing and duration of the breach and the industry in which a business operates. For example, breaches in the financial sector are liable to have far wider consequences than in the manufacturing industry. Despite this, there are 4 common impacts to consider when evaluating your cyber security decisions:
Reputational damage
One of the most harmful impacts of a breach is the threat to your reputation. Many people will equate past performance with future expectations. Becoming a victim of cybercrime impacts your customers’ trust in you, which may take years to recover from. This is especially true if it can be proven that the company failed in some aspect to maintain security over their client’s data. An estimated 60% of small-to-medium businesses do not recover from a breach and cease trading within a year
Theft
Small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) may be fooled into believing that cybercriminals target big enterprises due to higher-value opportunities. However, the truth is that big companies, such as banks, are hardened to attacks, with multiple layers of protection. In comparison, SMBs often offer a significantly softer target.
It is not just money that hackers are looking for, Information can be traded on the Dark Web for sizable sums, with breached domain administrator accounts often sold by auction online. Intellectual property theft is also a significant risk, with the potential for a company to lose years of research, either directly to competitors or through information being divulged into the public domain.
Financial losses
It is an unfortunate fact that cybercrime costs small businesses more than larger organisations when adjusted for organisational size. While the impact on large businesses can run into millions, they are better equipped to deal with such losses.
Small-to-medium businesses operate with much narrower margins and often will not survive the financial losses caused by data breaches.
Fines
Beyond the direct theft of money, research, and financial data, the prospect of further financial punishment appears in the form of fines levied to businesses that process the information on any European market that fails to protect that information. Since May 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) went into effect in the EU, with significant enforcement powers to punish firms that fail in their obligations under this act.
Fines for violations can reach up to 20 million Euros or 4% of a firm’s global annual revenue, per violation, whichever is larger. However, these fines, once again, fall disproportionately on smaller businesses. The single largest fine in 2020 was to Google, with a penalty of $57 million. The majority of SMBs would be unable to handle the lower rate of 20 million Euros.
3 Common Types of Cyber-Attacks (Relating to Staff)
There is a wide range of cyber-attack, including Man-in-the-middle, Distributed Denial-of-Service, SQL Injection, Zero-day exploits, and several more. However, the most common methods used against your staff will fall under these 3 categories:
Phishing and Spear Phishing
A Phishing attack is where an attacker tries to trick unsuspecting victims into handing over important information that can compromise a network, such as a password, credit card information, Intellectual property, etc.
Spear Phishing is much the same, but where Phishing casts a wide net, seeing who bites, Spear Phishing is targeted at a specific company, department, or even an individual.
Phishing is commonly performed by email but can be carried out by telephone.
Business Email Compromise
A Business email compromise (BEC) is an email-based attempt, usually aimed at an employee known to have the ability to authorise payments in an effort to trick them into transferring money into an account controlled by the attack.
BCE attacks can be one of the most financially damaging types of cyber-attack and typically require a lot of planning and research to be effective.
Malware and Drive-By
Staff can often accidentally download malware when visiting compromised websites. This can be from accessing inappropriate websites or clicking links received via email. When pushed to a user via a website, this is called a drive-by-download.
The outcome of this can be malicious data being downloaded, such as viruses. Such malware can act in different ways, from logging keystrokes, stealing credentials, allowing backdoor access to your intranet, or even holding the entire network hostage in the form of an attack known as ransomware.
DC Encompass IT Cyber Security Awareness Training
While no one expects your staff to be aware of what a SQL injection attack is, they can certainly be shown the risks of blindly revealing company information via any channel or how to recognise an email that was sent internally to one that was sent under a similar, but false, email address.
Ready to talk to an expert?
DC Encompass IT can provide you with a free Human-risk assessment to discover the risks your employees are unknowingly posing to your organisation. We offer a range of insights that your organisation can immediately take action on.
How DC Encompass helps your staff
By assessing the risk factors that can lead to an attack, your staff can work with us to improve the overall security of your business.
Using a baseline level of staff training for all your employees, we help build unique risk profiles for your team members, allowing you to identify areas of weakness and concern.
For individuals requiring a little extra support, we can launch personalised programmes and prioritise high-risk areas.
1. Assessment
The staff’s cyber awareness will be assessed using a suitable assessment method from our range of assessments
2. Enrolment based on Assessment results
Based on the score received for each individual staff member, we will enrol them into a suitable course that meets their needs
3. Analyse Reports
In this phase, you will receive reports for each unique staff member based on their assessment results
How DC Encompass helps your IT and Management teams
DC Encompass provides a range of IT Services and Solutions. Our platform tracks user performances and provides weekly manager digests to help ensure that processes are appropriately maintained and allows you to track course participation, user grades, areas of risk, and many other key performance indicators.
Compliance courses ensure that new staff can be quickly onboarded and made compliant in the minimum of time, saving the company time and money.
Can your company afford not to offer robust cyber security awareness training?
1. Management Reports
View how well your staff performed and their results from the assessments conducted
2. Set Policies
Set policies to ensure new employees are cyber aware and have completed the assessments during their early employment period to protect your organisation
3. Custom Training
Based on staff knowledge and expertise, the training will be customised to suit various levels of technical knowledge within your organisation
Protect your organisation by training your employees before any breaches occur