Cybersecure Your Business
Do you know what it takes to cybersecure your business? Are you prepared to handle a cybersecurity incident? Do you know where to start? If you’re like many business leaders, answering these questions can be a daunting task. All businesses should have a business continuity plan in the event that disaster strikes. For instance, these plans have traditionally focused on physical disasters, such as fire, flood, storms, or earthquakes. Nowadays, we can add cyber-threats to this growing list of potential disasters. Read on for tips and advice on how to cybersecure your business.
Cybersecurity First
Make security a priority for your business. Ensure that your organization’s processes and technology have security concepts built into them. Identify critical assets, systems and processes and take steps to protect them. Train your workforce to be cybersecure. Take steps to ensure that they don’t consider security an afterthought. From full time staff, to consultants, contractors and 3rd party vendors, your users need to understand the risks that the actions they take on your organization’s computing assets have consequences. Empower them to make good choices and to remember that their actions on computers could have negative consequences which they should try to avoid. Building a culture of security involves changing the mindset of the staff. As a result, they’ll care about security and protecting the organization.
Empower, Engage and Communicate
Provide your workforce with tools and information that they can utilize to promote a more secure work environment. All too often, employees hesitate to report suspicious activities or behaviors in part because they lack an understanding of their roles. Firstly, encouraging the phrase, “If you see something, say something” can be highly effective in encouraging employees to report suspicious activities or events. Secondly, an effective security awareness program will help them understand the importance of reporting suspicious activity.
Focus From the Beginning
Build a program that encourages employees to think about cybersecurity from day one on the job. This will help them to make good judgement calls in their day-to-day activities. Ensure that your IT staff not only helps prepare them for the job they were hired to do, but should also communicate with them the importance of security in the workplace. Build cybersecurity training into new employee onboarding and orientation.
Building a Culture of Security is a Team Effort
Cybersecurity should not be an afterthought. Teaching staff about security goes farther than simply training them on concepts. Help them understand how to think and behave in secure ways and it will become easy for them. At the end of the day, you’ll soon find that they become more interested in cybersecurity topics and will become good stewards of information security. They may be more willing to voice their concerns over insecure processes and procedures and suggest ways to improve. Getting everyone on the same page requires team effort, consistent communication and motivation.
To learn more, please visit The National Cybersecurity Alliance’s Cybersecure My Business program homepage.
Contact us at 2Bware for more information about how our Next Generation Security Awareness Program can transform your business,
