If your users aren’t trying to protect corporate data and assets, you’re at risk. What you need is for the user to become an integral part of their security measures.
It’s really simple – in every attack that involves phishing, spear phishing, vishing, smishing, drive by downloads, etc., a user is necessary to carry out part of the threat action. Without a click of an attachment or link, none of the attack methods mentioned will work. In essence, that single click is the difference between the organization being completely safe and being a victim of ransomware, data breach, espionage, etc.
When you think about the security measures you have in place, you likely have solutions that are sensors looking for badness – email scanners, antivirus, endpoint protection, etc. are all watching very specific aspects of the work your organization does daily, watching for something they determine is potentially bad.
The one part of your environment that isn’t living/eating/sleeping/breaching security is your users. And it makes sense this is the case; you purchased solutions that are intended to be mindful of security. But when you hired (“purchased”) a new employee to do payroll, you intend for them to do payroll, right?
So, the goal here is to make each of your users be another sensor in your security network – watching for things they think are potentially bad. Think about it: if every employee was mindful about the security of the organization, you’d have another 100, 1000, or 10,000 intelligent security sensors watchful against attacks.
That’s powerful.
To accomplish this, you need a few things in place:
- Users need to know what to watch for – Your AV solution, for example, has a database of all kinds of signatures, behaviors, etc. that it uses as the basis for what it’s looking for. Likewise, users need to understand what they may encounter that’s bad.
- Users need to know how to respond – Just like your security solutions quarantine and block that which they deem harmful, users need an appropriate response ready. In many cases, it’s merely the act of not opening/clicking/interacting with something potentially harmful. But even so, users need to know what the right response is.
- Users need to stay current – Cybercriminals change strategies and methods constantly, looking to innovate a new way of fooling your users. Solutions update their databases, so users need to update theirs as well.
All of this is achieved via Security Awareness Training and Phishing Testing. The training educates users on what attacks look like and how they should respond, keeping users up-to-date on the latest attacks. Phishing testing allows IT to see where the sensor network is weakest, using additional training to reinforce the need to maintain a mindset of security.
Free Phishing Security Test
Would your employees click on a phishing mail? We help you train your employees to better manage the urgent IT security problems of social engineering, spear phishing and ransomware attacks. Take the first step now. Find out what percentage of your employees are Phish-prone™ with our free test.
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