Security Awareness Training

Security awareness training is the process of educating employees about security risks, policies and procedures as well as good and bad security practices and how to maintain compliance with the security components of regulatory requirements.

The main purpose of security awareness training for employees is to reduce the company’s risk of a cyberattack or data security incident. This is done by educating employees about how to spot and avoid security risks, cyberattacks and bad practices. Training also educates employees about security policies and how to maintain regulatory compliance in locations or industries.

Security awareness training is critically important for companies to avoid cyberattacks and expensive data disasters in today’s volatile risk landscape. Employees that are educated about security risks can better avoid cybercriminal traps like phishing and business email compromise. Training also prevents data mishandling that could result in steep non-compliance fines.

Security awareness training for employees brings an array of benefits to businesses, including a drastic reduction in the number of security incidents that an organization experiences. Training ensures everyone knows that they are responsible for doing their part to maintain security and compliance, making employees more likely to adhere to security policies and procedures. A security awareness training program also arms employees with knowledge that helps them avoid cybercriminal tricks like phishing.

Security awareness training for employees is a security best practice and is mandated for companies that need to maintain compliance with dozens of industry and geographic statutes. Those statutes include but are not limited to:

• Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC)
• Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS)
• Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX)
• Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act (HIPAA)
• ISO/IEC 27001 & 27002
• Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act
• Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA)
• European Union General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR)
• United Kingdom General Data Privacy Regulation (UK-GDPR)
• The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)
• Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA)
• Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA)
• EU-US Privacy Shield Framework

Employees should receive training monthly for the best results. New employees should receive additional training as part of the onboarding process to ensure they’re knowledgeable about a company’s policies and procedures. No one, not even top executives or IT staffers, should be exempt from training.

A successful security awareness training program starts with choosing the right training solution. An innovative and complete solution like BullPhish ID provides short, easy-to-understand training videos in multiple languages with quizzes to measure retention. It will also include phishing simulations with options for content customization or plug-and-play campaigns. It is also critical that the library of available video lessons and phishing simulation campaign kits is updated regularly.

The right solution will also provide back-end tools to make administration a breeze. For instance, automated training delivery via a personalized user portal that tracks an employee’s progress, easy sorting of employees into learning groups, automated delivery of performance reports to stakeholders and simple, intuitive management that can be handled remotely.