The Importance of Employee Cybersecurity Training

Published on: February 10th, 2022

Recent reports from Gartner reveal that despite companies spending $150.4 billion on IT security and risk management initiatives in 2021, 100 percent of all web applications continue to be vulnerable to attacks. To protect your company’s data from threats, it’s increasingly critical that employee cybersecurity training takes place in the workplace.

Tips for Effective Employee Cybersecurity Training

Cybersecurity for your company starts with your employees. Utilize the following tips to secure your data and conduct employee cybersecurity training.

Include All Staff Members

No one is immune to hackers and cybersecurity attacks, so ensure all team members complete training. Don’t forget to include upper management, as well as IT department staff.

Review Signs of an Attack

One of the most important lessons in cybersecurity is recognizing the signs of an attack. Review common signs that a device or network is under attack such as:

Systems running slowly
Abnormal activity on the corporate firewall
Access logs showing unusual login times and locations
Frequent pop-ups
Device freezing or crashing

These are just a few ways that attacks may be happening in your office. Encourage employees to alert you if they notice any of the above, or other unusual autonomous activities.

NOTE: Ensure employees that there’s no such thing as a silly question. It’s better to report a problem and it be a false alarm than to go without reporting a problem and compromise your entire company network.

Explain Password Policies

One simple way that employees can safeguard their information, as well as company data, is using secure passwords. An employee’s password should contain a combination of various letters, symbols, numbers and capitalizations. No two programs or websites should have the same login credentials.

As you can imagine, remembering all of these long, unique passwords can be difficult. Consider investing in password management software like LastPass for your business to help employees keep track of their secure passwords.

Go Over Preventative Measures

In addition to explaining the importance of password management, your employee cybersecurity training should include information on measures to prevent attacks and security breaches altogether. Provide your employees with the following tips to prevent attacks:

When accessing company data remotely, implement multifactor authentication.
Keep your operating systems, browsers, and antivirus and security software up-to-date.
Regularly update your passwords.
Never open attachments or click on links from an unknown sender.
Never share sensitive information via email.
Back up critical business files and data using cloud services.

For more tips on preventing cyber attacks, utilize the Department of Homeland Security’s Stop.Think.Connect. for small and mid-size business resources. Stop.Think.Connect. is a public awareness campaign with the goal of educating users on cyber threats.

By helping employees understand the threat landscape and how to prevent network vulnerabilities, you are able to make cybersecurity a part of your company culture.

Webroot Security Awareness Training for Your Employees

If you’d rather leave employee training to the experts, count on Computer Troubleshooters! We offer Webroot Security Awareness Training as one of our foundational cybersecurity solutions. This video-based training teaches employees everything they need to know about staying safe online and safeguarding company data. After virtual training is completed, we will test employees’ knowledge by sending ongoing fake email cyberattacks. For employees that fail the test, additional training is required. At the end of each month, we send a monthly report detailing how the staff is doing on keeping their business safe.

For more information on how to protect your business from cyberattacks and to conduct employee cybersecurity training, contact your nearest Computer Troubleshooters office. Our team of security experts can help you establish an actionable plan and implement security measures to keep valuable company data safe.