Sep 12: Data breaches are becoming common as we see more and more businesses falling victim to cyberattacks and data breaches. It is estimated that data breaches cost an average of $3.8 - $4.4 million per breach and a majority of these data breaches involve human mistakes or human errors. These numbers alone should be enough to convince businesses and organizations that cybersecurity awareness and training programs are important.
Even though the importance of cybersecurity training is evident, most businesses and organizations don’t provide cybersecurity training and even if training is given, it is not made mandatory for employees. Due to these reasons, it appears that people are still not convinced about the importance and benefits of cybersecurity training programs, therefore, we will be discussing a few reasons why cybersecurity training programs are essential for businesses:
To Prevent Data Breaches
The first reason why cybersecurity training and awareness programs are important is that they can help to prevent data breaches. As mentioned earlier, data breaches are becoming popular and uneducated employees are becoming the main attack of cyber attackers. It is difficult to quantify the number of breaches that a cybersecurity awareness program prevents but these programs provide a good return on investment (ROI).
To Make Technological Defenses More Robust
By educating employees and staff members about cybersecurity, its importance, and how they can avoid falling victim to cyberattacks, especially phishing attacks, businesses can prevent many data breaches and save money.
As cyber attackers are getting more clever and coming up with new ways to breach into networks, technological defenses are also advancing to protect against cyber attackers.
Technological defenses are invaluable weapons that help to prevent data breaches and protect against cyber attacks but the problem is that these require input from people in order to perform their function correctly. For instance, WPA3 encryption of WiFi networks needs to be enabled from 192.168.0.1 in order to prevent intruders from accessing the wireless network.
By educating employees and staff members about cybersecurity, technological defenses, and how they can use them to prevent cyberattacks, businesses can make their defenses more robust against cyber threats. After cybersecurity training programs, employees would be well-aware of how to turn on firewalls from the 192.168.1.1 settings of wireless routers, how to acknowledge security warnings, how to deal with malicious links & attachments, and why software updates are important.
To Gain Customers' Confidence
Customers are becoming more and more tech-savvy with every passing day. They are becoming increasingly aware of cyberattacks and how cyberattacks can put their sensitive data at risk. Customers want to be ensured that their data is safe, secure, and in the right hands. To satisfy the customers and give them confidence, businesses need to provide cybersecurity training to their employees and make them well aware of its importance.
A majority of the customers have the view that businesses aren’t doing enough to ensure the safety and security of their data. Most customers also avoid doing business or sharing any sensitive information with a company that had a recent data breach. Customers pay special attention to the security credentials of a company or organization they intend to do business with. Giving cybersecurity training and letting the customers know about the training program will give your business the impression of a responsible and trustworthy company.
For Compliance With The Demands Of Regulators
More and more regulators around the world are demanding the implementation of cybersecurity training programs. By introducing training programs into your business, you are not only educating and making your employees more aware of cybersecurity but also complying with the demands of different regulators. By introducing a cybersecurity training program, you are training your employees to make the business processes more secure and also meeting the requirements of various regulators as a by-product of the training programs.
To Become A Socially Responsible Business
Cybersecurity training programs are also important to becoming a socially responsible business. If a company or network is affected by a cyber attack then it increases the risk for all the other people interlinked with the network including customers, suppliers, and other people. Most businesses are interlinked in one way or another and the absence of cybersecurity awareness in one company can make other companies vulnerable.
To Develop A Culture Of Security
These training programs are also important to develop a culture of security inside the office and company. Although it is hard to develop a culture of security inside a company, these security awareness programs are helping a lot. By making all the staff members and employees, from the board down to every employee, aware of cybersecurity, situational awareness, and how to keep yourself protected against cyber threats, you can create a culture of security where security values are rooted in the roots of your business operations.