A security breach can be devastating to a large organisation, delaying crucial projects, creating massive remediation costs, and negatively impacting the organisation’s reputation.
However, with 40% of data breaches occurring as a result of careless or unwitting insiders, your organisation has a huge opportunity to improve its security. Through simple employee security awareness training, you can dramatically reduce the primary cause of serious security breaches
One of the best frameworks for improving employee security awareness is the SOCIAL system; offering six tenets of effective security awareness that can be taught, quickly and easily, to your organisation’s entire workforce.
- Security-Minded
- Organised
- Conscientious
- Inquisitive
- Active
- Level-Headed
Today, we’re taking at look at the SOCIAL system, and showing you how to apply its principles in your own organisation.
1) Security-Minded
Within many organisations, security never enters into the minds of employees; and in others, security is simply taken for granted. In order to mitigate the human risk to security, it’s essential to bring security to the forefront of your employees’ consciousness, and ensure that individual employees understand the role they play in securing their organisation’s physical and data assets.
2) Organised
Password security is one of the biggest security challenges faced by large organisations. Whilst many employees are guilty of choosing weak and insecure passwords, others fail to store and secure their login credentials in a secure way. In addition to implementing guidelines for the choice and use of passwords, security can be improved by simply improving employee organisational skills.
If employees log out of computers and applications when not in use, lock cabinets and drawers when unattended, keep a watchful eye over mobile devices, and avoid the temptation of storing passwords on post-it notes, the risk of a data breach can be significantly reduced.
3) Conscientious
Many of the devastating phishing attacks employees succumb to can be avoided through simple vigilance. Whether it’s a suspicious email attachment, an unexpected URL redirect, or even an unsolicited call, employees that are aware of the common techniques employed by malicious third parties will be less likely to fall victim to their attempts.
4) Inquisitive
Effective security awareness needs to extend beyond conscientiousness; and the most secure organisations are those with actively inquisitive employees. Instead of being purely proactive and acting on security threats only when they finally become apparent, employees should always be on the lookout for potential threats.
Whenever an unverified caller, unknown person on the premises, or an unexpected email makes an appearance, employees need to do everything they can to ensure its safety and validity.
5) Active
The preceding steps are invaluable for preventing potential security breaches; but even with extremely conscientiousness and inquisitive staff, security issues will still occur. In these instances, it’s vital that employees are able to act on the threat, empowered with both the authority to take action, and the knowledge of the best way to do so.
Information regarding action in the event of a breach needs to be readily available, clear and concise – and all employees need to be aware of the executive mandate for doing so.
6) Level-Headed
In the face of inevitable security issues, employees need to remain as level-headed and calm as possible. Education plays a huge part in instilling this confidence, giving employees the knowledge, resources and authority to take decisive action whenever, and wherever, it’s required.
Instead of panicking at the first sign of a security vulnerability, security awareness training makes it easier for employees to understand how the problem occurred, who they need to inform of the problem, and what they can do to ensure the threat is remediated.
For more effective strategies for mitigating the human risk to security, download our eGuide below.
