Author: Daryl Irby

Categories
Security Awareness

How to Build Cybersecurity Awareness with Your Employees So It Becomes Part of the Culture

cybersecurity awareness

Cybersecurity isn’t just a technical issue; it’s a fundamental part of business operations. But how do you transform cybersecurity from a set of rules into a core part of your company’s culture? The answer lies in building a cybersecurity awareness program among your employees. Here’s how to do it effectively. 

  1. Start with Strong Leadership and Clear Communication

Leadership sets the tone for company culture. If the top executives emphasize cybersecurity, the rest of the organization will follow. Make it clear that cybersecurity is a priority through frequent, open communication. For instance, have your CEO discuss the importance of cybersecurity during company-wide meetings. Show that it’s not just an IT issue but a company-wide responsibility. Clear directives from the top underscore the importance and make everyone take notice. 

How to Communicate Effectively: 

  • Include cybersecurity updates in monthly newsletters. 
  • Have leadership share personal anecdotes about cybersecurity. 
  • Use clear, jargon-free language to discuss cybersecurity initiatives. 
  1. Integrate Cybersecurity into Everyday Conversations

Cybersecurity should be part of everyday work discussions, not just something that comes up during annual training. Encourage teams to include security topics in their regular meetings. This could be as simple as a five-minute discussion on a recent phishing attempt or a quick reminder about safe password practices. When cybersecurity becomes a regular topic, it’s easier for it to become part of the routine. 

Tips for Integration: 

  • Appoint a “Cybersecurity Champion” in each department to lead brief, regular security discussions. 
  • Use real-world examples of cyber threats during team meetings to keep the topic relevant and engaging. 
  • Encourage open communication about security concerns or suspicious activities employees may encounter. 
  1. Provide Continuous and Interactive Cybersecurity Awareness Training

Annual cybersecurity training isn’t enough. Many find online training to be ineffective as well.  When considering training, think about the culture.  We need to make the training engaging and interactive that is tailored to the individual. It is also important to make people not only understand why cybersecurity is important, but why it’s important to them. 

Make learning about cybersecurity an ongoing process. Offer interactive training sessions that employees find engaging and relevant. Gamification, such as quizzes or interactive simulations of phishing attacks, can make learning about security both fun and memorable. The goal is to create an environment where learning about cybersecurity feels like a part of professional development rather than a chore. 

Effective Training Techniques: 

  • Use gamified modules to make learning enjoyable. 
  • Implement regular, short refresher courses throughout the year. 
  • Consider training on scams and cyberthreats that apply in their personal lives and their families. 
  • Offer rewards and recognition for employees who excel in cybersecurity awareness. 
  1. Lead by Example: Practice What You Preach

Employees will follow the example set by their leaders. If managers and executives adhere to and prioritize cybersecurity practices, employees are more likely to do the same. Ensure that all levels of management are trained and visibly committed to best practices in cybersecurity. When leaders demonstrate good cybersecurity habits, they set a standard for the rest of the company to follow. 

Ways to Demonstrate Commitment: 

  • Have leaders participate in the same cybersecurity training as employees. 
  • Encourage managers to discuss their cybersecurity practices openly. 
  1. Develop a Security-First Mindset

Creating a culture of cybersecurity starts with instilling a mindset that values security in every aspect of work. This means encouraging employees to think about security in all their tasks, from handling emails to managing customer data. Emphasize the idea that every action, no matter how small, can impact the company’s security posture. 

Building a Security-First Mindset: 

  • Incorporate security checkpoints into routine workflows. 
  • Encourage employees to question and report anything that seems off or unfamiliar. 
  • Provide clear guidelines on secure work practices, such as handling sensitive data and creating strong passwords. 
  1. Implement User-Friendly Policies

Complex security policies can be daunting and may discourage employees from complying. Develop and implement clear, user-friendly security policies that are easy to understand and follow. This might include simplified procedures for reporting phishing attempts or straightforward rules for password management. When policies are accessible and understandable, employees are more likely to adhere to them. 

Creating User-Friendly Policies: 

  • Use plain language and avoid technical jargon. 
  • Make policies easily accessible through a centralized online portal. 
  • Offer quick reference guides or cheat sheets for common security practices. 
  1. Encourage Reporting Without Fear

Employees should feel comfortable reporting security incidents or potential threats without fear of reprisal. Create an open and supportive environment where employees are encouraged to speak up about any security concerns. Ensure that reporting mechanisms are straightforward and that employees know their reports will be taken seriously and addressed promptly. 

Promoting Open Reporting: 

  • Establish anonymous reporting channels for security concerns. 
  • Regularly reassure employees that reporting threats is a positive action. 
  • Provide feedback and follow-up on reported incidents to show that they are being addressed. 
  1. Reward and Recognize Good Security Practices

Recognizing and rewarding employees for their good cybersecurity practices can reinforce positive behavior and encourage others to follow suit. This could be as simple as acknowledging an employee’s vigilance in spotting a phishing attempt or rewarding a team for consistently following security protocols. Recognition can foster a sense of pride and responsibility towards maintaining cybersecurity. 

Ways to Reward and Recognize: 

  • Implement a rewards program for employees who demonstrate strong cybersecurity awareness. 
  • Highlight success stories in company-wide communications. 
  • Provide tangible rewards, like gift cards or extra time off, for exemplary security behavior. 
  1. Foster a Culture of Continuous Improvement

Cybersecurity is a constantly evolving field, and staying secure means continuously adapting and improving. Encourage a culture where employees are always looking for ways to enhance security measures. This could include soliciting feedback on current policies or encouraging employees to stay informed about the latest cybersecurity threats and solutions. 

Strategies for Continuous Improvement: 

  • Regularly review and update security policies to address new threats. 
  • Invite employees to share their ideas for improving security. 
  • Offer ongoing education opportunities about emerging cybersecurity trends. 
  1. Make Cybersecurity Personal and Relevant

Help employees see how cybersecurity impacts not only their work but also their personal lives. Explain how the same principles that protect the company’s data can also protect their personal information. Making cybersecurity personal can motivate employees to adopt and adhere to security practices more rigorously. 

Connecting Cybersecurity to Personal Lives: 

  • Share tips on how employees can protect their personal information online. 
  • Provide resources on how to secure home networks and devices. 
  • Highlight real-life examples of cybersecurity breaches and their impacts. 

Conclusion 

Building cybersecurity awareness among employees is more than just training; it’s about embedding a security-conscious mindset into the fabric of your company’s culture. By following these steps, you can create an environment where cybersecurity is not just a policy but a way of life. Start with strong leadership, make security a part of everyday conversations, provide continuous training, and reward good practices. Together, these strategies will help transform cybersecurity from a set of rules into an integral part of your company’s DNA. 

Remember, the more ingrained cybersecurity is in your company culture, the stronger your defenses will be. So, take action today and make cybersecurity an unwavering part of your organizational ethos. 

 

Categories
General Cyber and IT Security

Understanding the Modern Cyber-Threat Landscape and Its Impact on Your Business Operations

Banner - Threat Cyber Landscape

Digital transformation has played a substantial role in the evolution of the modern cyber threat landscape—especially during the COVID-19 global pandemic, which gave rise to the environment of remote work. As businesses tackle challenges associated with the fully virtualized working environment, the implementation of emerging technologies within corporate networks has helped enhance business operations to meet the growing demands of IT process virtualization and automation, data storage, data privacy and security, etc.

However, threat actors also learned to leverage the digital transformation era to achieve attack precision and scalability. In today’s modern cyber threat landscape, sophisticated cyber-attacks have dramatically increased: with ransomware attacks projected to occur every 11 seconds in 2021 and the losses associated with Business Email Compromise (BEC) averaging $80,000 per victim, it is clear that cyber threats have made their way to the top of business risks in the last couple of years.

As organizations attempt to detect and respond to signature- and behavioral-based tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), newer threat actors emerge with more sophisticated and far-reaching TTPs than their peers. Therefore, understanding where your corporate security posture is aligned with the dynamic nature of the modern cyber-threat landscape is critical to determining the likelihood, probability, and impact of a security incident on your infrastructure.

In this article, we discuss the evolving complexities of the modern cyber-threat landscape, its impact on business operations, and how to align your security posture to achieve cyber-resilience. 

Most Likely Cyber Threats In 2021

As the cyber threat landscape is constantly evolving in nature, you must know how to spot new threats, and how to identify the techniques that threat actors may be using to bypass your existing cybersecurity infrastructure.

As a security professional, it is important to understand that the threat landscape in 2021 and beyond is likely to expand, with more attack vectors than ever before.  The SolarWinds attack in 2020 showed us that organizations can suffer from a breach through their software vendors in addition to their internal applications. APTs will be investing their time into new vectors of attack throughout 2021, with more of a focus on enterprise software and the growing hybrid environment, to name a few. 

The rise in persistent threats is a cause for concern, as threat actors are making their way into critical infrastructure more easily, through a combination of AI, automation, and existing techniques such as malware and phishing, to enhance the sophistication of their attacking methods. Threat actors are now more likely to use their knowledge of emerging technologies, such as attacks via IoT devices, such as smartphones and routers, and use it to expand the scale of their attack (moor backdoors, more access points).

Preparing Your Business for the Modern Threat Landscape

Responding to cyber threats within the modern landscape is a difficult task if your IT department does not actively encourage a mixture of AI-powered threat intelligence–information about cyber threats and threat actors–as well as human effort and security awareness. AI and automated threat detection and response are not sufficient on their own to fight against the adaptive intelligence of today’s threat actors. 

The first step to take is to make sure everyone on your team is aware that threat intelligence is only one stepping stone towards a resilient cybersecurity posture. The emergence of new technology in your existing infrastructure will provide threat actors with security loopholes to attack through, and it is your responsibility to understand and adapt your cyber threat response plan accordingly against the growing number of attacking vectors.

To fight attacks before they become prominent threats, it is vital to consistently implement threat prevention, detection and response countermeasures using human-based capabilities as well as automated capabilities. 

Common countermeasures for preparing for cyber attacks should include basic cyber hygiene, such as security awareness training and tabletop exercises; security policy developments for critical infrastructures; managed network detection and response procedures that are documented; MDR and EDR monitoring; and regular assessments.  Therefore, incorporating human touch and automation in the threat detection and response procedures provide more holistic insights and visibility in attack avenues. 

Combating the Probabilities and Impacts of Emerging Cyber-Threats

As your organization’s infrastructure changes, so does the need to protect your data and accounts. Emerging cyber threats are more prominent in areas of functionality that are limited in cybersecurity flexibility, where outdated security tools are still playing catch up with the software/applications themselves. This is often either at the fault of the IT department, or the software vendor themselves. Common examples include remote working setups and applications that are still yet to implement industry-standard security updates such as endpoint protection. It is estimated that 77% of organizations do not yet have a detailed incident response plan in place. 

Cyber incident response preparations

Emerging cyber threats are only going to get more prominent as the barrier to entry for threat actors becomes artificially lower. With a growing selection of open-source AI software and automated tools available to the common cybercriminal, the cost to commit cyber crimes is getting far lower. Technical knowledge is now also becoming a less-critical requirement for threat actors, as phishing and malware techniques can be learned online and thus automated using the tools they obtain.

Luckily for CTOs/CISOs, policy and plan development assessments and network/endpoint monitoring can be implemented very easily. By adopting the following 3-step approach, you can begin to enhance your cybersecurity posture much quicker:

  • Prepare and know your current and future risks by implementing basic hygiene measures, such as cybersecurity training to all. 
  • Protect/defend your infrastructure by implementing automated cybersecurity tools such as MDR/EDR, so threats are recognized and responded to proactively before any damage is caused.
  • Respond to attacks with a progressive mindset, so they cannot ever be repeated. This step involves setting more robust cybersecurity policies like MFA and restricted data access for some employees.

The only way to combat the rising probability of an attack is to have all of your employees adopt a security-first, zero-trust mindset. Your organization will be using more software, more environments and more applications than ever before in 2021, therefore security has to be at the forefront of every user’s mind at all times.

Human error is the cause of 95% of cyber attacks, so the easiest way to respond to these threats is to actively encourage caution, and a standard procedure for all employees when they are operating in the sensitive or emerging environments that may cause reputational and financial burden if breached.

Promote the benefits of regularly updating software, fully encrypting PII or PHI data, and steering away from any link, file, or email that is not associated with your organization. Although emerging threats are hard to spot, practicing a staged attack can help you assess where the weakest link is, so you can enhance your security posture as required.

Conclusion

Threats are real and so are threat actors.  Therefore, you always must stay one step ahead of them. In today’s business landscape, IT infrastructure represents a key business risk because the attack sophistication of threat actors today is capable of impacting business continuity and causing damage worth tens of millions of dollars. Financial damage is not the only downfall, as an organization’s reputation can be quickly lost as a result of a successful breach, whereby customers will quickly lose all trust in the continuity of their service.

There are a number of security applications readily available, which can be implemented in all environments, such as cloud, AI-powered systems, and remote working. Whether you choose to implement data loss prevention,  multi factor authentication (MFA) or behavior analytics into your existing cybersecurity posture, it is paramount that your threat response plan combines the human initiative too. If your security posture is limited in either the technological or human aspect, threat actors will always have the upper hand on speed and persistence.

Understanding and responding to the modern threat landscape should be one of the top priorities for the management in any organizations. It is always worth investing in an objective view and independent confirmation, to see if your infrastructure has the right protection available to mitigate the growing intelligence of modern-day threat actors. 
If you would like to receive expert advice to support all aspects of your cyber security infrastructure, visit SecurIT360 to get the most out of your security assessments, endpoint detection and response processes, as well as compliance-ready penetration testing. All aspects of cybersecurity are critical in the landscape of emerging technologies—let us manage your operations as a concerted package.

Categories
Computer & Network Security

An Argument for Increased Focus on Data Backups

Data Backups Banner Image

The necessity for backups has always existed, but the reason for backing up has changed significantly in recent years. Today, backing up data is just as important for cyber security reasons as it ever has been for disaster recovery. But our architecture must be rethought with this new emphasis.

When did we start conducting data backups?

A long time ago–in a galaxy far, far away…–backups we’re theoretically designed to mitigate against the risk of a disaster: fire, flooding, equipment failure etc. In reality, they were used primarily to correct bad decisions (we updated the server and it crashed, now we must go back to the previous version). A long standing practice of any IT change process I have been a part of has been “Back it up before you do that.” With the prevalence of virtual machines and the ease of taking a “snapshot,” back ups became very easy to do. Software and converged infrastructure have also made this increasingly robust and convenient as well.

However, with convenience comes a price. Many of our backup systems are on shared storage. We back up to the same place logically that our files are stored. And this is the underlying fallacy in our new cyber security reality. Our backups used to go to tape and get stored off-site. A return to this complexity needs to occur.

Backup Best Practices

Backups need to be on a completely separate storage volume that is not accessible to anyone or any bot, except that backup software. The credentials need to have strict complexity and policy to prevent access. Traffic should only be initiated from the backup network to the backup target and no traffic allowed to be initiated from the client network. Additionally, this information needs to be taken offline with regularity, removing it from the network.

Data Backup Illustration
Data Backup Best Practices

Here’s a scenario: Organization X is performing backups and test restores according to their risk management profile. Some info is backed up daily, some hourly. Everyone is happy with the results. Suddenly, ransomware attacks the network and begins encrypting any data that is exposed, including backup files on a shared drive. This renders the backups useless for recovery from this attack.

Finally, this needs to be an executive level discussion. If you were the CEO of an organization, you would immediately be informed if the network was “down.” Being operational and ensuring your employees are productive is the most important piece of information you can receive from your IT team. The second most important piece of information should be “the backup process didn’t work last night.” The amount of risk this puts you in, potentially having to replace work from an entire day or longer, should be a risk you are aware of and constantly guarding against.