Implement training throughout your organization
Security training should not be a project pushed to employees only by the IT department. To succeed, awareness training needs management approval and support throughout the process. Without it, your team is unlikely to be motivated to spend their time on awareness training and may have reservations about doing the courses.
Once team leaders and management throughout your company promote cyber security training, your employees will see that everyone is responsible for creating a secure company, not just the security or IT department. It can also encourage open communication about the training or other security awareness topics.
Show both the personal and organizational importance of security awareness
Everyone cares more about things that can affect them personally. That’s why we recommend security training programs that teach why good security practices are important in both personal and work environments.
Personal data breaches can negatively affect both employees and the company. Once employees understand what they personally risk in a data breach they will take the training more seriously. Reserving a workspace (Dutch: werkplek reserveren) for example should be done in a secure environment for you company.
By addressing the personal aspect of data security, train your employees to apply good cyber hygiene regularly, both at work and at home. In short, these good habits will become normal in their lives instead of something they have to remember and do at work.
Keep it simple
One of the most important tips for successful security awareness training is to make the content relatable and easy to understand. Remember that your employees usually don’t have a technical background and it’s easy to get discouraged by training if you have to Google words all the time.
Difficult jargon can make employees feel even more removed from the world of IT security. If they don’t understand what the risks are, they can’t protect themselves or the company from threats.
Therefore, you need to explain topics in clear, conversational language. This increases the learning process and ensures that your employees will participate more enthusiastically in security training, leading to a successful program in the long run.
Give the training in small chunks
From passwords, to phishing attacks, and from the AVG to social engineering, there is so much to learn about IT security. In security awareness training, it’s impossible for your employees to handle, process and retain all that information at once.
You can’t give someone the entire set of Harry Potter books and then expect them to read them all within a day and remember everything that happened.
That’s why security awareness training should be delivered in small chunks, over a long period of time. That way you give your employees time to think, practice and breathe, while keeping IT security on the agenda for longer. We recommend short training sessions of 5-10 minutes.