With more companies switching to remote operations in light of COVID-19, bad actors are taking advantage of some gaps in businesses’ normal security posture. From pandemic-related phishing emails to malicious SMS messages, hackers are targeting your organization’s weakest link: security-uneducated employees working in less digitally safe home environments.
While endpoint security is an important concept to introduce your remote employees to, it’s no easy feat. Educate your remote users on the latest cyber threats with our recommended approach:
Encourage your employees to care about your cybersecurity.
How can you expect your staff to care about the security of a company that they don’t feel invested in? Your first step in getting your employees to care about your cybersecurity is to get them to care about your business as a whole. Oftentimes, this is a two-way street: an employee wants to know their employer cares about them.
By creating a work culture that makes your staff feel appreciated and secure, they will in turn want to protect the business like it was their own. Take a hard look at the way you support your employees and encourage their career and self-growth. You may be surprised by how suddenly they start prioritizing the company’s cybersecurity after you work on improving their psychological security.
But even devoted employees can be negligent to cybersecurity if they don’t understand what’s really at stake. Make it personal by reminding your team that it’s not just your company and customer data that’s at risk (though, obviously, this is still important), but that a hacker could also glean private information about employees themselves by scrubbing through cracked internal data.
Here are a few more ways you can encourage your team to care about your cybersecurity, including getting buy-in from your leadership team and creating a strong initial mindset with new hires— just to name a few.
Constantly communicate
Oftentimes, employees are completely unaware of the current state of your cybersecurity— especially when working remotely away from the natural buzz around the office. To them, IT takes care of all security, and more often than not, no news is good news. But waiting until you’re breached isn’t the best time to mention your security.
Make your company’s cybersecurity an internal affair by regularly sharing the state of your protection. Task department leaders with relaying updates and news about any changes or developments on their meeting agendas, as a once-a-month check-in.
You could also add any updates about your cybersecurity to your employee newsletter, giving your team just another place to go for updates. Your newsletter may also be a good place to share a relevant cybersecurity article or awareness resource, without needing to force staff to subscribe to unwanted blogs or email drips.
Looking for informative articles to share besides the Mitnick Security blog? Check out the KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training blog.
Perform regular internal security tests and give out awards.
Keep cybersecurity at the forefront of your employees’ minds by testing them frequently on their tech know-how. This could be secret screening like Social Engineering Strength Testing to test your staff during their everyday work. With this option, you can privately pull offenders aside and help educate them to the threats they fell victim to.
Or, you could make an office-wide game out of it. Require employees to take a brief questionnaire/test once a month and offer enticing prizes for those who get a perfect score or consistently earn good grades. Share the top-performers in a congratulatory email, but don’t stop there. Small gift cards or a day of PTO can go a long way in motivating your team to learn more about digital security remotely.
Dive even deeper by requiring a more extensive formal training program, complete with certifications. These lesson plans and tests could be something your team does every six months or each year to ensure they’re staying up-to-date on the latest cyber threats— which are always evolving.
Organize informative webinars/demonstrations with cybersecurity experts.
While educational videos and articles about cybersecurity have their own merit, there’s nothing quite like watching a live hack happen before your eyes. By scheduling a virtual event, you can give your employees a chance to watch a live broadcast of security exploits right in action.
These live events often end with a Q&A session, granting your team a chance to get their answers in real-time. Plus, some presenters allow you to keep and share a recording of the digital event with employees who could not attend, ensuring that no one was left behind.
Curious to host a virtual event? Check out our planning article and explore our webinar and video broadcast offerings here.
Try microlearning.
Your employees are busy, and sometimes it’s hard to ask them to set aside a few hours at a time to learn about cybersecurity. It can be even harder to engage remote workers, who have their own set of distractions at home.
Help your team learn with a different kind of security awareness training— the Mitnick approach.
We offer one to two-minute microlearning video lessons, interactive lessons, and episode-based, Netflix-like shows to cater to different learning styles and keep the attention of your team.
Learn more about our comprehensive security training library here.
