How to Build a Cybersecurity Culture in Your Organization
Cybersecurity is a one-person/team job, a common misconception that business owners and employees carry. However, the reality is far from that; cybersecurity is everyone’s responsibility. Cybersecurity culture must be ingrained in your business’ DNA, and your employees and contractors should know their obligations and responsibilities. This blog aims to distill a number of strategies to help foster a culture – securing your business and employees alike.
The Importance of a Cybersecurity Culture
When done correctly, a cybersecurity culture can significantly decrease your employee’s and contractors’ risk of falling for a cyber attack and is significantly more effective than any commercial tool that can be purchased and installed.
Top-Down Approach
At the heart of a thriving cybersecurity culture is leadership commitment. It’s not enough to set and advocate for best practices; you must actively engage your employees and personnel to act when required, such as completing security awareness training. While software is a tool, your unwavering commitment to cybersecurity will motivate your team to follow suit. Remember, cybersecurity is everyone’s responsibility, and as leaders, you must ensure your stance is clear.
Policy Management
While policies may be perceived as cumbersome, they are highly effective in documenting and communicating the expectations for your employees and contractors. They serve as a compass, guiding employees when they need direction. Therefore, it’s crucial to create solid policies and ensure their accessibility to your employees and contractors. Including some essential information security responsibilities in your employment or contractor agreements is even advisable, as they are more likely to be read (rather than skipped over). Ensure they’re in an easy-to-access location and are pinned or highlighted so users can find them. An example of such a strategy could be pinning links sent to a Slack channel that contains the policies.
Awareness Training
One of the more obvious ones is cybersecurity awareness training, which is fundamental to building a security culture. While the traditional annual training and training when employees are hired is a good start, it is recommended to select a vendor that can build individualized training programs for your employees to target their specific deficiencies. This is in contrast to a basic approach that does not work and does not give employees a bad experience. A WatchDog Security subscription does just this, harnessing the power of our propriety human risk algorithm. This advanced technology, integrated into your subscription, assigns courses targeting specific deficiencies, ensuring a more resilient workforce.
Reporting Mechanism For Incidents
Whether through policy or other dissemination methods, ensure it is known how employees or contractors can report internal cybersecurity incidents. This can include a help desk ticket system handled by someone internally or a reputable third party. Once reported, incidents should be investigated, determined if it’s a false positive or a true positive and action accordingly. SMBs and Startups find this challenging, as having in-house cybersecurity experts can be extremely expensive. Thankfully, WatchDog Security was created to recognize this. A subscription to WatchDog Security Workspace Defender includes unlimited cybersecurity investigations performed by a team of experts with threat hunting, incident response and malware analysis experience (including offensive security operations), responding to incidents before they happen, quarantining threats and flagging anomalous activities and contacting the relevant users in your organization All investigations are documented within your Incident Center, giving you immediate visibility.
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