Cyber Training and Awareness

What is Cyber Awareness Training?

Cyber awareness training refers to an educational program designed to teach people associated with your organisation how to identify, prevent, and respond to potential cyber threats. This type of training covers essential topics like phishing awareness, secure data handling, password management, reporting incidents and safe browsing habits.

Cyber awareness training programs usually cover employees only but for some more regulated and mature sectors, these programs can be extended to contractors and third parties too.

Many reports highlight the significance of such programs. For instance, 82% of breaches in 2024 involved human elements, such as social engineering or misusing access credentials, according to the Verizon 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report. This statistic underscores the importance of maintaining awareness of evolving cyber threats.

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Challenges Addressed by Cyber Awareness Training

Human Vulnerabilities: Humans are unpredictable and easily manipulated, especially if they haven’t had the right training. Your employees can be the weakest link in the chain and that’s why the vast majority of cyber attacks target individuals in some manner.

Sophisticated Attacks: The frequency and sophistication of human-based cyber attacks is increasing. Training that up skills staff on the latest attack vectors (e.g. AI-powered deepfake video scams) are essential for organisations to protect themselves.

Compliance Requirements: In heavily regulated sectors with strict regulations, it’s often explicitly required to have a continuous cyber awareness training program to abide by laws such as the DPA (UK), GDPR (EU) or HIPAA (US).

Measuring Cultural Change: It can be tough to gauge how well employees grasp and apply cyber security practices. Without the right metrics, it’s hard to tell if training is effective or if staff are truly ready to handle cyber threats.

Benefits of Cyber Awareness Training

Fewer Incidents: Training employees to recognise and respond to cyber threats can significantly lower the chances of expensive data breaches. A recent report from IBM highlights that organisations with cyber awareness programs saved an average of $1.49 million in breach costs compared to those lacking such programs.

Stronger Culture: Training builds a culture where cyber security is integral to everyday work. It helps employees follow security policies and contribute to a safer digital environment. When done correctly, the culture can slowly be shifted from cyber security being viewed as predominantly ‘policing’, more towards it ‘enabling’ business activities.

Staff Feel Supported: Being the victim of a scam, inadvertently losing company money or causing a data breach at work can be emotionally distressing for the individual. Training and awareness activities protects employees’ well-being as well as the company’s data.

Who Needs Cyber Awareness Training?

Small to Medium-Sized Businesses (SMBs): SMBs often lack the budget to invest in high-end security solutions but still need to protect against cyber threats. Cyber awareness training provides them with a cost-effective way to reduce the risk of internal security breaches.

Organisations with Regulatory Compliance Requirements: Industries such as finance, healthcare, and education are often required to conduct regular security training for employees. Cyber awareness training ensures compliance with regulations such as GDPR and HIPAA.

Growing Companies with Expanding Teams: Companies undergoing rapid growth can benefit from consistent and scalable security training to keep new employees informed and security conscious as the organisation evolves.