It’s smart to provide Security Awareness Training for your employees. Why? Even with top security services, hackers keep coming up with trickier ways to fool their victims. You can’t 100% guarantee that your clients will stay safe.

Just one breach can cause tons of hours of operation to be lost, damage to the trust you’ve built with clients, and financial loss.

Here are 10 reasons why security awareness training is a MUST:

Think about it… why do you floss and brush your teeth? So that you don’t have to pay to get a cavity filled. How is your network any different? Preventative measures are cheaper than trying to fix a problem. Don’t leave the future of your business in untrained hands. Educate them!

1.Weakest Link

• In 2016, phishing attacks were behind 90% of security breaches. Phishing attacks like these contribute to over 93% of ransomware attacks (1). So let’s be honest, users are the weakest link in the cyber security chain.

2. First and Last Line of Defense

• Users are usually the easiest target for attackers. They can be easily fooled into opening suspicious emails, downloading bad attachments, and visiting malicious URLs. If trained properly, users will learn how to spot potential threats and can become the first line of defense.

3. Wise Investment

• The Ponemon Institute studied phishing awareness training programs. Even the least affective progam still resulted in a 7-fold ROI(2).

4. Breaking Bad Habits

• Investing in security awareness can help break users’ bad habits by teaching them about how important the role they play is to keeping their organization safe. Companies that provide cybersecurity awareness training see failure rates go down from as much as 25%-5% in just one year (3).

5. No Target Too Small

• Small businesses have the same risk as large companies. Not only do they handle the data that hackers want, but they’re also less likely to have the resources to get strong security programs that the large businesses can afford.

6. High Stakes

• An attack on a client is also an attack on your company as it can create financial and legal blows, damage customer loyalty and trust, and even threaten the survival of a business.

7. Threats Aplenty

• There are so many different forms of threats that users won’t be able to keep up with the defense line without proper education. Just a few examples of threats are phishing, drive-by downloads, malvertising, ransomware, social engineering, code injection, and many more.

8. Work in Progress

• Cybersecurity threats are always evolving and changing, which makes user education an ongoing necessity. Research shows that providing continuous security education for employees can reduce the risk of a cybersecurity breach by an average of 50% (4). Wow!

9. Assured Compliance

• Different industries, such as financial services, healthcare, and energy, may face some pretty pricey fines for neglecting to provide training.

10. The Trifecta

• Security awareness training is a win-win-win scenario. The user becomes more aware and secure, the company reduces its risks and compliance records remain in good standing, and finally the managed service provider minimizes its remediation time and costs.

Think about it… why do you floss and brush your teeth? So that you don’t have to pay to get a cavity filled. How is your network any different? Preventative measures are cheaper than trying to fix a problem. Don’t leave the future of your business in untrained hands. Educate them!

Resources:

1. “2017 Data Breach Investigations Report.” (April 2017)
2. Ponemon Institute. “The Cost of Phishing & Value of Employee Training.” (August 2015)
3. com. “Does Security Awareness Training Even Work?” (September 2015)
4. Aberdeen Group. “Security Awareness Training: Small Investment, Large Reduction in Risk.” (July 2017)

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