The Key to Effective Cybersecurity Training

Just because the global health crisis negatively affected business operations for many doesn’t mean cybercriminals were any less active. According to a recent study, cybercrime increased significantly in 2020—about two-thirds of organizations suffered at least one successful attack or infection. To stay ahead of this dangerous curve, organizations are increasing their security awareness training even while employees were working remotely. However, for cybersecurity training to be effective, it’s not enough simply to tell employees the threat exists and to avoid it. The best modality for this type of training involves in-context, real-world methods of attack and embedding employees within the program itself. This should be ongoing and part of their day-to-day lives at work. For example, employees should receive a notification that an email they reported was indeed a phishing attempt to help drive home the fact that these are issues they’re dealing with every day. For security training to have meaningful impact, it needs to go beyond simple jargon and PowerPoints about threats. It needs to be real, and it needs to be hands-on.