Paving a Path to Stronger Cybersecurity at Work
Businesses constantly seek to increase cybersecurity strength and protect workplace systems. This goal evolves with new cybersecurity challenges and employee needs. Keeping pace involves empowering employees to support cybersecurity initiatives and implementing a multi-prong approach to security measures.
Facing an increase in the volume and variety of cybersecurity challenges, from phishing attacks to malware, companies often adopt a multi-layered approach, which according to IBM, includes:
System-level security: protecting your systems
Network level security: protecting your network access
Application level security: protecting users from apps they use or provide
Transmission level security: protecting data communications
We recommend a fifth layer to include people security: protecting your employees in their personal and professional lives, which helps to build better habits and a security culture. This additional layer pushes employees to recognize the role they play in enhancing workplace security.
Last year, darkreading.com published an article exploring the potential challenges in building greater awareness and adoption of cybersecurity measures. Some of these roadblocks include:
The Challenge: Some generations have grown up publicly sharing every part of their lives through social media and are not so conscious about protecting information.
The Opportunity: The everyday person is becoming more aware of cybersecurity best practices following recent news of social media incidents like the 2021 LinkedIn hack. Send a quick employee memo about how to easily enable two-factor authentication or 2FA on their social media accounts or really any of their accounts that enable 2FA, like these three examples:
The Challenge: The increasing volume and variety of cybersecurity tools can overwhelm the average employee.
The Opportunity: Much like getting a child to eat just one vegetable, work towards achieving a small victory by gamifying the adoption of at least one tool. Encourage options that can be used across personal and professional settings like a password manager to show the time-to-value easily.
The Challenge: Employees are busy and may need to be prompted to learn how to use cybersecurity measures, check protocols about suspicious emails, or notify the right parties when they accidentally click on a "bad link."
The Opportunity: Make time to celebrate good behaviors. Similar to getting employees to adopt one tool, shout out employees who identify potential issues like notifying the right parties when they receive a phishing email.
Building a culture of cybersecurity awareness starts by creating an employee-centric education program and implementing tools that empower employees to share information securely, are easy to use, quick to learn, and enhance productivity.
In a previous blog on enterprise threat prevention, we discussed how empowering employees with the right tools raises awareness of cybersecurity (A), change behaviors (B), and help build a security culture (C). The ABCs of cybersecurity show that the more employees change behaviors and contribute towards a security culture, the more aware they become of evolving cybersecurity challenges and the closer you become to achieving a more impenetrable workplace.
Encourage employees to practice cybersecurity measures by adopting a password manager. Start a Bitwarden Enterprise free trial today.