When Employees Fail to Take Cyber Threats Seriously

Most companies have daily cyber attacks against their systems, employees, and even the company as a whole. The majority will be unsuccessful. Either because the Email Security, the Firewalls, the AntiVirus, and other systems do their work, or because some employees are prepared to detect frauds and other illicit behaviors.Unfortunately for numerous enterprises, many of their employees remain ignorant of the threat. The reality is that no amount of protection can safeguard business against employee decisions that compromise cybersecurity.

A new study revealed that one in three business owners do not have protective measures in place to defend sensitive company data against attacks, even though 60% of companies go out of business six months following a cyber attack.

What most businesses fail to understand is that the number one liability to their entire system is employee negligence. Around, for instance, their inability to detect cyber scams and attacks when they occur. And attacks and scams happen to any business, at any time. So, when employees fail to take cyber threats seriously, it’s a cause for concern and a need for serious introspection.

Raise Awareness

Employees are the prime target of cyber attacks. But what employees fail to understand is their role as the first line of defense against cybercrime. So, it’s up to the business owner to remind them every day, until everyone on the staff is aware of the threats surrounding cybersecurity.

Educate Employees

Awareness is critical, but education is key. Teaching employees about best practices, as well as consequences and useful tips can instill in them a sense of responsibility. And while many businesses feel they lack the right resources to educate their staff, there are cost-effective ways to initiate a cybersecurity education campaign:

• Don’t scare employees into submission. It’s important to persuade employees to become aware and learn about cybersecurity for professional and personal reasons. But that doesn’t mean you should emphasize consequences all of the time.
• Start small. Slowly introduce the topic to employees and use infographics, informative articles about email security, and videos to raise interest. Send out reminders via newsletters, or create fake emails to test them. It’s important they learn that cybersecurity is their responsibility, too.
• Promote regularly. It’s crucial that employee education on the ups and downs of cybersecurity remain a continuous process, to get the message to stick. Follow up regularly with the training, and arrange lectures about different types of attacks each month.

Implement Security Systems

Learning best practices is the next step in employee education. Teach them about the importance of creating a strong password on their accounts and regularly changing it. Request each employee research verification measures and implement them on their email accounts.

If you can, hold a meeting and discuss a company-wide measure of confirmation when dealing with financial transactions. It will get everyone on the same page when a request for a wire transfer arrives, to prevent phishing and business email compromise scams.

And if the budget permits, discuss advanced security options with CTOs and other tech professionals at the company. Consider mail protection service, secure gateways, anti-virus software, and email traffic monitoring.

At AnubisNetworks, our goal is to educate businesses on the importance of cybersecurity and the genuine threats of cyber attacks. Even though it might seem a complicated matter, mail protection services are easy to integrate with any email ecosystem, regardless of the number of accounts on your domain. Request a demo and start protecting your corporate email communications today.