In the modern age, security is vital. After all, attackers are lurking around any corner, and the risk of a security breach is higher than ever. But, intricate tools and strategies are only a small part of this. One of the most important other parts of security is ensuring that everyone in your business follows important security procedures and considers security as part of their wider work.
The end goal of this is creating a ‘security-aware culture’ — ensuring that security is a core tenet of your company and that everyone knows exactly how important security is. This is becoming more and more of a must in 2024, so making sure you know how you can facilitate this in your business is vital.
In this article, we’re going to go over the ins and outs of developing a security culture in your business. We’ll take a look at how employees play a vital role in strengthening security, as well as how you can overcome common challenges and reap the rewards of a strong security culture within your business.
The Importance of Security Culture
Security is critical for your business to consider. With half of the businesses in the United Kingdom having experienced a cyber attack in the past twelve months, it’s clear that this is becoming a problem — and that your business needs to be prepared for attackers.
A security culture is one of the best ways of dealing with this — putting security at the forefront of your business will make sure that security is a key thought going forward at all times. From making key decisions to implementing new procedures, a security culture will allow you to make sure that security comes first and foremost.
How Employees Contribute to Security
Employees are your frontline. They do the bulk of the work in your company, so ensuring they know the ins and outs of good security practices is vital. With their work, they will often be in the position that matters the most when it comes to security.
Firstly, social engineering attacks will often target your lower-level employees, to try to get them to give up credentials by appearing to be communications from a higher-up. But, on top of this, your employees are the ones using the tools and the interfaces day-to-day, so it’s up to them to make sure that security is airtight.
Practical Tips for Engaging Employees
Regular training and awareness programs
Making sure to regularly train your employees on the threats that they can face will ensure that everyone is not only aware but also prepared for security threats and issues. Assessing your employees on their security awareness will ensure that you know exactly what your employees need to learn when it comes to security.
You can run different types of training to try to grasp employees’ understanding of different security issues, and then offer extra support to those who need it.
Clear communication
Clear communication is vital when it comes to educating employees about security. By communicating clearly and effectively at all times, your employees won’t get confused about what is required of them.
Incentivise good practices
By rewarding your employees for following good practices, you can incentivise them to be constantly making good security decisions. Gift cards or other bonuses for good security practices are a great way to incentivise this.
Phishing simulations
Phishing simulations are a specific type of training that provides realistic phishing scenarios to help test your employees’ phishing awareness. By regularly running simulations, you can find areas of weakness and help support employees in this.
Encourage reporting
Reporting is vital — after all, the only way that you can deal with issues is by knowing about them, and reporting is vital to doing so. By encouraging reporting, employees can make issues known and can openly share problems.
Overcoming Common Challenges
Lack of awareness of the importance of a strong security posture
One common challenge is the lack of awareness of the importance of a strong security posture. Some companies have no clue about the importance of security — and you don’t want to be one of them.
Educating personnel throughout your business about the importance of a strong security posture will help with this.
Complex security policies
If your security policies are too complex and difficult to follow, it’ll be impossible to follow them. People won’t want to follow a complex set of instructions, which is far worse than a simple set of instructions that do get followed.
Prioritise robust and easy-to-understand policies, over complex policies that might not get followed at all.
Insufficient resources
Allocating resources is a difficult process in any company, but failing to allocate resources to IT and security will mean that you can’t employ a strong security strategy.
Reaching out for support is the best way to fix this, as a service provider like ourselves will be able to ensure that you have everything you need.
Benefits of a Strong Security Culture
Reduces risk of breaches
A strong security culture will ensure that everyone knows the importance of security, which will ultimately mean a lower risk of security leaks and breaches.
As everyone knows the importance of security, the security strategy will be airtight and all of your employees will be able to know how to keep their security standards high.
Improve compliance
Compliance regulations often require tight security practices, as they ensure that data isn’t being used irresponsibly.
A security culture that understands compliance will mean that you don’t ever breach compliance requirements, avoiding the consequences of doing so.
Reduce costs
Security problems cost money. The damages of an attack or a breach can be incredibly costly, so making sure your security standards are high will reduce costs all around.
A strong security culture will also mean that you can save costs when it comes to security strategy, as part of the duties will fall onto your employees — you won’t need to invest in extra tools as your employees will be self-enforcing part of your strategy.
Shared responsibility
By sharing the responsibility between yourself and your employees, you reduce the strain of security protocols all around. The onus isn’t solely on you to enforce security, and you can implement strategies based on a shared responsibility system.
How We Can Help
Security is a vital component of any business. Especially in the modern world, your security strategy should be the top priority for long-term success.
If you’re looking to get started with improving your security culture and posture, reach out to us today. Our experts are here to help and will make sure you have everything you need to hit the ground running.
Get in touch with us now and see how we can help.