Tip of the Week: 11 Ways to Instill Security Awareness in Your Team

While it really would be a nice thing to have, there is no magic bullet for your business’ cybersecurity—no single tool that allows you to avoid any and all issues. However, there is one way to help make most threats far less likely to be successful: building up your company’s internal security awareness amongst your employees and team members. Let’s go over eleven ways that you can help ensure your company is properly protected, simply by encouraging your employees to take a more active role in guarding it.

11 Ways to Make Sure Your Team is On Their Guard

Gamification

In order to fully absorb the lessons that your security training is meant to impart, your team members need to be engaged in the training. One famously effective way to encourage this is to make it fun (at least to some degree).

Running simulated attacks, with incentives given out to motivate your employees to do their best in identifying and reporting them, with help to reinforce the positive behaviors you want your team to exhibit if and when they have to contend with the real McCoy. This also allows your employees to gain practical experience with a live threat, so to speak.

Incorporate Security Awareness into Onboarding Strategies

There’s a lot that has been said about the impact that a first impression can have, so it only makes sense to have one of the first impressions you place onto your newly-hired employees be the importance of cybersecurity. Instilling good security habits early on will only help your organization resist more threats in the future.

Make It Understood that Mistakes are Expected

Accidents happen, and the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry. Regardless of how well your team is prepared, there is almost certainly going to be a slip-up somewhere down the line. Part of your security training has to be the acknowledgment that there will be mistakes made by your employees, and the publicized acceptance of that outcome.

If your team members expect to be punished for their mistakes, they will only work harder to hide them. You need to know about these issues so that they can be resolved, and your team members educated so that these mistakes are not repeated.

Shape Training to Your Team’s Situation, Work Roles, and Age Groups

Chances are, your team members are not a monolith… in addition to the many different roles that they likely fill, they come from a variety of backgrounds, age groups, and other differentiators. As a result, a single method of teaching isn’t likely to work equally effectively amongst them all.

While it is important that everyone is trained, it is equally important to remember that not everyone will respond to a given form of training in the same way. You need to diversify your training strategy to involve a variety of methods to account for the various learning styles your team members are likely to exhibit.

Keep it Short, Sweet, and Frequent

Long, cookie-cutter training sessions are a great way to disengage your team from the lessons that your training is meant to impart. Substituting marathon-style training for shorter, more frequent “sprint” sessions will help keep your team interested, and will allow for more consistent training to take place.

Use Different Mediums

Much in the same way that your training needs to account for various learning styles, your training should come in different formats. Basically, you don’t want your training to exclusively be presented as group lectures delivered to the team (or whatever your chosen default is). By switching up the format, you help to make your training more impactful, which will help it stick better with your teammates.

Encourage Them to Share Lessons with Their Families

One of the best ways to ensure that your employees fully understand the cybersecurity principles that you’re imparting upon them is to encourage them to pass on these messages themselves to their families. Not only will this help make their home security more robust, it will reinforce the habits that you want them to uphold.

Select Company Security Leaders

Identify the people in your company who take to the security practices that you impart most effectively and empower them to take a leadership role in terms of your company’s security. Not only will this give you a more focused security infrastructure, it helps you to more completely fill your company with your message.

Keep Your Material Fresh

While it might seem like a good thing to have your team members be able to recite your training materials by heart, there’s a difference between rote memorization and really absorbing the lesson. Switching up the lessons will help to keep your team sharp, engaged, and on the alert.

Collect Feedback

If you want to know how you can make your training more effective, the best way to find out is to ask your team members. Ask them what resonates with them, what they could use more help with, and (most importantly) what they don’t know enough about yet. While it may sound funny to ask your team members what they don’t know, they’ll likely let you know what they feel less confident about (thereby giving you the opportunity to remedy it).

Emphasize Why Training is Necessary

Another reason that your team may not respond well to training is because they simply don’t appreciate why it is so important. Incorporating the why into your training, alongside the how, is sure to help your team become more accepting of the necessity of training.

One Up Solutions Northwest is here to help your newly-security-focused team members identify and respond to threats more effectively, assisting them however we can. Reach out to us to find out more about our security services by calling (503) 278-5011 today.