Being the top management of your company, how it would reflect on your behalf if the person and the financial information of all of your employees were leaked during a rent cyber breach? Especially when the reasons leading to such turmoil include; zero interest over up-gradation of the security systems, less training modules for the development of intricate characters among your IT staff and most importantly less exposure of your IT professionals with latest risks and advancements in the hacking principles being implemented by the hackers of the new age?
Wouldn't it look a simple, honest, and yet a dreadful mistake? Yes, it would without any doubt. The whole internet is filled with topics, blogs, and articles suggesting how your IT professionals are your biggest assets and how it is important that you spend generously over their training practices. But a little information is provided in context with the training options that should be considered while putting together an executive training program for the IT officials at your company. Without further ado let us explore various options that you can avail for the effective training of your IT professionals;
Exposure with Different Types of Security Threats
Your it team without any doubt is more than able to counterfeit any cyber breach that is thrown their way, they can neutralize its consequences as well as build an effective plan to make sure that the same threats don't surface in the future. But what if the threat they are dealing with is unknown to them, they have either not worked with it or have not heard it before; this can lead to some exhilarating consequences for the security infrastructure of the company. That is why the best training option for your IT professionals is to increase their exposure with different types of security threats contemplating serious havoc among the security infrastructure of major companies throughout the globe.
For most of the training, it is going to include the basic tools used by hackers for manipulation but in an elevated style such as; malware, viruses, spyware, ransomware, pushing, and other types of social engineering hacks.
To tackle the phishing side of the business, you can come up with clever exercises that include a phish but not in an email. It could be a message over social media platforms or a simple innovation inhabiting the virus.
Malware, viruses, ransomware, and spyware all have pretty much the same itinerary and course of execution, however, include in the training different ways these can interact with the company's infrastructure and ways your employees should adapt to counterfeit their attack. For example, if some employees were tricked into downloading files containing any of such extremities, then train them on how to use their best observational and professional skills to avoid such havoc.
Social engineering hacks are one of the rawest and yet sophisticated forms of the cyber attacks in which your employees can be manipulated to hand over sensitive information to other illicit cybercriminals perpetrating as normal trustworthy people.
Password Security is Important
Passwords are the key to unveil the hidden contents of any online entity of the user, just like that. People tend to use a simple and generic combination of credentials that are too easy for hackers to unravel or crack. That is why your It professionals need to understand the importance of password security and how to implement the dedicated attributes into this specific section. They could either come up with a string system that helps the users or customers of the company to select strong and equally worked out passwords that are not only difficult to break but also extremely potent to withstand any encryption software used by the hackers.
A strong password should be lengthy, contain a different set of numbers, letters, and tools, and in some cases, special characters can also be used to solidify the integrity of the password combinations.
Understanding Policies regarding the Internet, Emails, and Social Media
IT employees are the catapulting engine of your company, and they control every aspect when it comes to securing the data or network infrastructure of the company. That is why a proper set of policies must be standardized and followed equally by the IT professionals; this will ensure that the proper standards are being followed and effective policies are in place to make sure no vulnerabilities arise and are taken advantage of by the hackers.
Polices regarding emails, the internet as well as social media platforms can include; not opening/clicking the malicious links that either looks suspicious or characterized as dangerous by your potential threat scanner or antivirus program. Similarly, the potential phishing emails should not be opened or directed for any particular type of execution whatsoever. This can reduce the propulsion of vulnerabilities raising high over the surface of your company's network infrastructure and afterward used by hackers for their illicit gains.
Protecting the Company's Data/ Secured Information
One of the best options to include among your list of cybersecurity training is to include the protection of the company's crucial data and secured information over sophisticated and encrypted network channels. It is the most fundamental aspect of the job entailed for every IT professional, and that is to secure the onboard data of the company along with other security information away from the reach of the illicit hackers and other cybercriminals.
The legal, as well as the regulatory obligations that surround the data protection rules, should be made crystal clear to the It professionals working for you. The main reason to implement these changes is because such rules do provide a proper course of action to tackle various cyber incidents and bounce back from the ramifications of such anomalies, if you decide not to follow such rules and regulations then you might as well don’t have any proper direction to face the current cyber anomalies as well as the future threats that your company would have to interact with, in the long run.
Explore our Security Awareness training library.