A recent group poll estimates that millions of workers have switched to work from home models during the pandemic. Without a doubt, this makes it difficult for organizations to protect their data and applications. While it provides a lot of flexibility, remote work blurs the line between official work and leisure time, as employees juggle between work-related apps and personal stuff, including social media and online shopping platforms, increasing the potential for cyberattacks.

That said, human resource and training teams should focus on helping employees prevent cyberattacks as they access emails or social media platforms, especially when using company-provided technology. Even though network firewalls can prevent hackers from accessing company data, apps used by employees can leave them vulnerable. This explains why you should educate your employees about cybersecurity. Use the following tips to ease employee education.

1. Communicate Potential Impact of Cybersecurity Incident

The best way to capture your employees' attention is by explaining the consequences of a cybersecurity incident on your company. This includes financial losses, fines, and eroded customer trust. Walk them through what can happen if an employee leaves his/her laptop on the bus, access work-related documents over public WIFI, or use a work device to access personal emails. Surprisingly, most employees aren't aware of the dangers of subjecting your business to these everyday behaviors.

2. Improve Your Cybersecurity Messaging

The first tip in providing effective cybersecurity education to your employees is using the right messaging. In most cases, IT teams use incomprehensible terms that standard employees struggle to understand. Generally, your messaging should be easily understandable, diversified, and relatable.

An understandable messaging should avoid tough tech jargon that can bring confusion and cloud the message. If possible, use simple terms that non-tech or layman workers can easily understand. Your training should also be relatable. For instance, when discussing external threats, make it more about personal computers and not the central network. Employees can easily relate if the dangers are framed to their phones or laptops and not some imaginable server.

Lastly, your training should be diversified. One email that outlines everything might not be sufficient. Considering the number of emails from sales departments, clients, and prospects that employees receive daily, they can easily read the email and dismiss it as just a normal internal memo.

3. Teach Them about Various Types of Cybersecurity Threats

For your employees to spot and prevent a cybersecurity breach, they should have some basic knowledge about the common types of cybersecurity issues and how they present. For this, educate them about spam, malware and ransomware, phishing, and social engineering.

Start with spam, which is the most basic and common cybersecurity threat. Educate them on how they can identify spam content on emails and social media messages. You should also provide training on phishing using real-life examples of phishing scams to help them note the difference between real and falsified emails. Highlight various indicators of a phishing email that make them easily identifiable

Cybersecurity tips for preventing malware, ransomware, and social engineering should also be highlighted during the training. That aside, provide insights on how to spot malicious activities on their devices. For instance, they should be suspicious if;

• New programs or apps suddenly appear on their devices

• Unusual pop-ups when starting, using, or shutting down their devices

• If the device slows down significantly

• Presence of new tabs or extensions in the browser

• If they lose control over the mouse or keyboard

Insist that they should report immediately if they notice any of these suspicious signs. Even if the report is a false alarm, it is beneficial as it helps clear errors in their devices that can affect productivity.

4. Make Cybersecurity Training Part of Onboarding and an Ongoing Conversation

First impressions often determine a lot during recruitment, and cybersecurity shouldn't be an exception. If you haven't included organization data security in your onboarding process before, you should incorporate it into the training process. Explain various organizational rules and best practices that employees should observe to maintain data integrity.

That aside, provide continuing training to employees on cybersecurity. You can achieve this using the following tips;

• Make use of different approaches, such as newsletter updates and announcements.

• Make all updates following the KISS rule, which means "keep it short and simple." This makes it easy for employees to glean and retain the updates even after a long, hectic day.

• Provide updates on current cybersecurity trends. Reach out to your employees every time there is a new malware or phishing scam.

• Make the updates eye-catching. For instance, opt for colorful infographics instead of do's and don'ts or listing statistics.

• Try cybersecurity tests occasionally if employees are willing to evaluate their knowledge. For this, consult an employment lawyer if there are potential repercussions of doing this.

Bottom Line

Effective cybersecurity education should allow employees to appreciate the importance of treading safely on the internet, especially under work networks or company devices. Good knowledge in cybersecurity is the first line of defense against external threats.