Cyberattack Prevention 101: How To Enhance Employee Cybersecurity Awareness
Introduction
The digital age brought convenience and resulted in interconnectedness among people. It benefited not just ordinary individuals but also businesses – both big and small – in almost all industries. However, some of these benefits come with associated problems, like how companies that rely heavily on digital and smart devices constantly face cyber threats, such as malware attacks, phishing and vishing, and spyware.
Due to this, cybersecurity awareness for businesses in the Philippines is no longer a luxury but a necessity. It becomes even more crucial to safeguard your company from potential harm brought by digital threats. Fret not, though, because there are people who can improve your cybersecurity measures and help lower the risks of falling victim to such cyberattacks. InfoBahn Communications, Inc. is more than willing to offer assistance, so feel free to get in touch with us for more information about our services.
The Basics of Cybersecurity
Before anything else, cybersecurity is all about protecting your digital assets and data systems from unauthorized access and malicious threats. It is comprised of a wide range of digital practices. They include basic actions, like using stronger passwords or building firewalls, and more sophisticated measures, such as securing digital networks and adopting complex encryption techniques.
All in all, cybersecurity helps you create a strong defense against digital threats. Because of this, companies (especially those that heavily rely on digital devices and internet-powered systems) need to invest in the best cybersecurity measures and tools. However, these cybersecurity structures will be ineffective if you and your employees lack awareness about cybersecurity.
Cybersecurity awareness starts with recognizing that digital vulnerabilities are ever present and that they can be exploited by people who want to get unauthorized access or infiltrate your organization. To raise cybersecurity awareness, many companies invest in information security awareness training for their employees and perform other measures, like the ones listed in the next section.
How To Improve the Cybersecurity Awareness of Your Employees
Enhancing cybersecurity awareness within your organization empowers your workers and equips them with the tools to fend off digital attacks. Here are a few tried and tested strategies that you can employ:
Evaluate Employee Knowledge of Cybersecurity
The first step in any cybersecurity awareness initiative is gauging your employees’ existing knowledge. You can do it through surveys or quizzes that take just a few minutes to conduct. However, for a more thorough and careful assessment, interviews and one-on-one discussions are required.
The goal of the assessment is to identify knowledge gaps. It also helps you determine if your workers are at least aware of basic cybersecurity concepts and can recognize signs of phishing scams or malware attacks. With the evaluation, you can get a baseline understanding of where your average employee stands concerning cybersecurity. Once you have the data from the evaluation, you can then plan how to improve their awareness.
Furthermore, employee cybersecurity awareness evaluation should not be a one-time thing. It is advisable to do it regularly to ensure that your workers retain the knowledge they are provided with during cybersecurity awareness training sessions.
Conduct Cybersecurity Awareness Training
The importance of cybersecurity training cannot be overstated. It equips your employees with the knowledge and skills needed to recognize and mitigate potential threats. You can regularly invite experts to educate your workers about different cyberattacks that can put themselves and the entire organization at risk.
Regular cybersecurity training also helps ensure that employees know why data protection is paramount in any organization. By seeking help from expert instructors, you can allow them to learn the best practices to properly maintain data confidentiality and integrity. With this, you can effectively safeguard sensitive information about your business, partners, clients, and other stakeholders in your organization.
Different organizations require unique approaches to their training. Some sessions can be facilitated virtually, with the trainee having full control of their pace. Meanwhile, other courses require hands-on experience. Reputable IT training companies can help create structured learning programs based on the needs of your employees.
Determine Weak Areas Within the Company
Your organization’s existing cybersecurity infrastructure (if you have one) should also undergo careful evaluation. This provides you with a bird’s eye view of the areas that are weak and vulnerable to potential cyberattacks. You can proactively prioritize those areas and ensure that any digital security lapses are properly addressed.
Determining the weak areas within your organization requires implementing an all-around review of your systems. This includes assessing the security of your digital networks, evaluating your computer programs and software systems, and even inspecting physical and digital access control measures.
Get Help From IT Experts
Consulting a third-party cybersecurity firm is a must if you wish to protect your organization from digital threats. You might have an IT department in your company, but cybersecurity experts from the outside typically have specialized knowledge that can help address issues your own IT people may need help to handle.
Indeed, third-party cybersecurity specialists can help keep your cybersecurity initiatives robust. They can do more than that, however. In some cases, you can also ask them to assist in improving cybersecurity awareness in your entire organization. What they can do is provide adequate cybersecurity training sessions for your employees and help them be equipped with the knowledge needed to defend against cyberattacks.
Provide an Action Plan in Case a Cyberattack Happens
Prevention is the most critical aspect of cybersecurity, but the possibility of an attack is always there. This is why an essential part of your cybersecurity awareness initiative is providing a detailed action plan in case a cyberattack happens. It depends on the needs of your organization, but some of the things you need to do are:
- Identify the Type of Attack –Identifying whether the attack is a malware infection, a phishing scam, a denial of service (DOS), or any other kind is crucial. Once you know what type of attack it is, you can tailor your response and effectively defend against it.
- Protect Other Devices From Being Affected– Also determine if other devices are susceptible to the same attack. This way, you can take immediate measures to ensure that separate computers and equipment will not be affected.
- Repair the Damage– Once you have contained the attack (by protecting other devices), you can focus on repairing the damage inflicted on your systems. This may involve identifying and recovering lost data, restoring compromised networks, and ensuring that all affected devices are cleansed. It is a complex procedure, so you might want to hire third-party IT experts.
- Contact Law Enforcement– Reporting the attack to the proper government agencies is crucial if data has been compromised and stolen. They can help you with the investigation and even assist in tracing the perpetrators, mainly because it involves potential leaks of confidential information.
- Make Changes to Your Security System– Reassessing and fortifying your security measures is crucial once you have experienced an attack. Request help from IT specialists to determine how to prevent such an incident from happening again in your organization.
Risks and Consequences of Poor Cybersecurity Awareness
With the current digital landscape, it is essential to talk about the risks and potential consequences of poor cybersecurity awareness for companies in the Philippines. Here are a few issues you might face by neglecting cybersecurity awareness:
Operational Disruptions
One of the major consequences of compromising cybersecurity awareness is having to deal with operational disruptions. A cyberattack, no matter if it seems minute, can cause disorders in your business processes, leading to delays and bringing employee productivity to a standstill.
The damage it can cause depends on the severity of the attack. Ransomware, for instance, can lock everyone out of their computers and result in significant operational downtime. Other kinds of attacks are not as grave, but they can still lead to minor delays, which can snowball into larger problems in the future.
Financial Loss
With your operations rendered immovable, what comes next is a loss of profit. However, this is not the only way neglecting cybersecurity awareness can lead to financial losses. In some cases, employees who lack knowledge about phishing and vishing scams can unintentionally provide access to the organization’s funds. This gives fraudsters enough time to conduct direct theft.
Responding to cyber incidents can also be quite costly, which can put a dent in your organization’s finances. You might need to hire experts to investigate the breach. Also, you must implement measures to ensure that such incidents will never happen again.
Legal Problems
Part of cybersecurity awareness is engaging your employees in data privacy training sessions. This way, they will understand their responsibility to safeguard confidential information about them and your organization’s clients, investors, and other stakeholders.
With poor cybersecurity measures and awareness initiatives, unauthorized people may gain access to the supposedly classified information about individuals involved in your company. If this happens, you might be forced to enter legal battles, which can be tedious and incredibly costly.
Damaged Company Image
One of the lasting and most impactful consequences of poor cybersecurity awareness is reputational damage. Customers, clients, investors, and even the public at large can lose their trust in you if it has been proven that a cybersecurity breach happened in your organization due to inadequate awareness initiatives.
You can still get back from such damage to your company’s image. However, it will surely take large amounts of time, effort, and money before you can earn the people’s trust again.
Secure Your Company by Consulting IT Experts
If you are looking for cybersecurity experts in the Philippines, you are in the right place. InfoBahn Communications, Inc. is here to provide you with different IT services, including cybersecurity solutions. We can also help in improving cybersecurity awareness among your employees.
Rest assured that we have the expertise and knowledge to help you. We have been in this business for many years already, and we have had numerous clients who have been satisfied with the kind of service that we have delivered. For more details, you can contact our team through our channels.
FAQs About Cybersecurity Awareness in the Philippines
Why Is Cybersecurity an Important Issue?
Cybersecurity is a primary concern among organizations because they rely heavily on digital systems. Personal data, critical infrastructures, and other vital networks are connected to digital systems, making them easy to manage and organize but also quite susceptible to cyber threats and attacks.
It becomes crucial for organizations to take cybersecurity seriously to prevent such problems from happening. One of the first things they can do is initiate cybersecurity awareness training sessions among employees and ensure they understand the pressing issues concerning digital security.
What Is the Biggest Issue in Cybersecurity?
It is difficult to pinpoint a single “biggest” issue in cybersecurity, considering it is a complex and broad concept. However, in recent years, organizations started implementing work-from-home setups and faced numerous cybersecurity problems associated with remote work.
Ordinary employees might not be adept at recognizing early signs of cyber threats, which makes them vulnerable to attacks. It becomes crucial for organizations, especially those with fully remote or hybrid environments, to improve cybersecurity awareness of their employees to help secure everyone’s data.
What Does a Cybersecurity Analyst Do?
You can hire a cybersecurity analyst to help protect your organization’s digital assets. Their responsibilities include detecting suspicious activities, analyzing data security, and identifying network vulnerabilities, among other tasks.
Conclusion
Cybersecurity awareness is something companies in the Philippines should always pay attention to. Inadequate measures concerning digital security awareness can lead to various problems, including financial losses and reputational damage. To avoid such issues, it is best to request help from professionals.
InfoBahn Communications, Inc. is here to provide you with cybersecurity solutions. Contact our team today to get a quotation for our services.