How can cyber awareness training defend your business against cyber attacks?

Cyber resilience is your organisation’s ability to pre-empt and withstand the impact of an attempted cyber attack. It’s essential to ensure your workforce are cyber resilient by providing effective Cyber Security Training.

Protect your business from cyber attacks: the features of effective cyber security training

To ensure your employees are the best line of defense against cybercrime, ensure you choose training that is up to the job.
The training employees receive should meet a number of key criteria:

• Breadth and depth – there are a number of areas of cyber resilience that employees need to be aware of and understand, and for each of these there are steps that they can take to mitigate against potential risks. Therefore cyber security training must cover the breadth of subtopics within this field, and the depth to ensure your employees can deal with them
  
  
• Up to date – unfortunately cybercrime is fast evolving, cyber security training is not a stagnant activity and therefore it should be regularly updated by the provider
  
  
• Accredited – one way to ensure that cyber security training is of a high standard and fit for purpose, is to check if it is accredited. For example, as with all of our eLearning courses, Access Learning’s Cyber Awareness Training is accredited by the CPD Certification Service, but, in terms of Cyber Security specifically, most importantly we hold accreditation for these courses from the NCSC, the authority when it comes to cyber awareness and building resilience

Who should undertake cyber security training?

Cybersecurity isn’t just a concern for IT teams – it’s a problem for all - HR, managers and the wider workforce too. You may be surprised to hear that the most senior members of the organisation are at no way exempt – in fact the operational workforce are core targets, and this includes the CEO and senior leadership team.

Rapid digital transformation has changed today’s way of working for the better in many ways. However, it has also sparked new vulnerabilities and poor habits among both managers and their staff.

Lack of training that truly changes behaviours is a big issue, especially within companies that don’t put in the time to review their approach to cybersecurity regularly. Staff learning in this area is often technical, which in our view is often the wrong approach.

Yes, there needs to be the technical element, and for the IT team to have the software and systems in place to detect and prevent. But, when it comes to awareness and behaviour change, human centred storytelling, video led with real people and subject matter experts is what makes good awareness learning. This is how you will engage your workforce and help them change behaviour towards actual and potential cyber threats.

This means that training content has to be digestible and delivered in the right way to avoid disengagement among staff.
Your whole workforce needs to understand that cyber security isn’t just a problem for IT – it’s their responsibility to keep their organisation protected as well.

It might only take one weak link in the chain to bring an entire network down and disrupt performance.

How can cyber attacks be reduced through cyber awareness training?

Effective training matters, here are a few ways that cyber attacks can be reduced when cyber awareness training is done right:

• Embed the right behaviours

Whether it’s being able to spot phishing attempts or setting standards for password encryption, there are many behaviours that contribute to cyber resilience through cyber awareness training.

• Engage staff with multimedia learning

The problem with most cyber awareness training is that it doesn’t inspire engagement among staff and eats into company resources. Today’s employees expect a mixture of video content, microlearning and person-centred exercises, much like the type of content they enjoy outside of work. It’s also a considerable advantage to deliver cyber awareness training on the go through an intuitive mobile app. Engaged learners are more likely to complete, retain and use the knowledge gained in their training.

• Recover quickly in the event of a cyber attack

Prevention is always better than cure, though if you experience a breach in your defences then your business needs to react in the right way. Employees should know how to spot and report issues as soon as possible, but they must also be made to feel confident in doing so as part of a ‘no-blame’ culture – this is a vital element of their cyber awareness training.

• Promote individual Responsibility

Collective cyber resilience stems from consistent habits at an individual level. Every employee should understand their role in contributing to the security of their data, but also that of their team and their business. Training can help to embed this mindset and ensure a workforce takes collective responsibility to reduce cyber attacks.

Do your staff know how to defend against cyber attacks?

Whether you’re an ambitious business taking your first steps towards cyber resilience or a large enterprise that wants to stay at the forefront of your industry, our team is here to talk through your situation and find the right solution to suit your needs as an organisation.

Our market-leading, NCSC and CPD accredited catalogue of cybersecurity training offers incredible value and quick integration with your wider LMS and compliance learning training strategy, giving you a single source of truth and a place to store all your data under one roof.

Organisations of different sizes partner with us because our learning catalogue:

• Enables learning on all devices

• Fully accessible to WCAG guidelines

• Available in over 100 languages

• Prioritises video content with real people

• Engages staff through micro-learning