What Is Security Awareness Training?

What is security awareness training?

Security awareness training helps prevent and mitigate human risk. Designed to help users understand the role they play in combating security breaches, effective security awareness training teaches proper cyber hygiene, security risks, and how to identify cyber attacks delivered via email and web browsing.

Why do your employees need security awareness training?

Research suggests that human error is involved in more than 90% of security breaches. Security awareness training helps to minimize risk thus preventing the loss of PII, IP, money or brand reputation. An effective awareness training program for employees addresses the cybersecurity mistakes that they may make when using email, the web and in the physical world such as tailgating or improper document disposal.

Why is good security awareness training important?

Unfortunately, human error accounts for a large majority of security breaches. According to Stanford University Professor Jeff Hancock, 88% of data breach incidents are caused by employee mistakes, like using unsanctioned software or hardware, improperly disposing of documents or granting too generous application and document permissions. Security awareness training helps prevent these mistakes by equipping employees with the knowledge and practice for avoiding risky data movements and online behavior.

Often due to lack of people resources, some companies are unable to institute good security awareness training. However, a proactive approach to security awareness training can help minimize insider risk and save in the long term by avoiding expensive losses and lawsuits.

What is the difference between security awareness and security training?

Security awareness and security training are closely related, but they focus on different aspects of employee education.

• Security awareness is about building a mindset. It helps employees recognize that they play a key role in protecting the organization and encourages them to stay alert to security risks in their daily work. Awareness programs focus on helping users understand threats like phishing, social engineering, and careless data handling. This way, they’re less likely to make mistakes that could lead to a breach.
• Security training goes one step further by providing hands-on instruction. It teaches employees how to take action, such as how to report suspicious emails, securely share documents, or follow safe browsing practices. Training sessions are designed to build practical skills that reduce the chance of an incident.

Together, awareness and training help create a security-first culture in your organization. Awareness builds understanding while training builds capability.

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What are best practices for approaching awareness training?

Effective security awareness training focuses on engaging today’s workforce to reduce user risk. Many security awareness training programs ignore education best practices, delivering training in one-off sessions that overwhelm users with information or worse, are forgettable.

For training to stick, it needs to be persistent, delivered regularly in small doses to fit employees’ busy schedules. Most importantly, positive reinforcement and humor performs better than fear-based or boring messaging to improve retention of critical security topics.

Components of a Security Awareness Training Program

A strong security awareness training program usually includes:

• Engaging, relevant content: Training should feel practical and role-appropriate so employees are more likely to pay attention, understand the material, and remember it later.