Mastering Defense with an Effective Security Education, Training, and Awareness Plan

Technical defenses alone are not enough to protect against cyberattacks. Having a security education, training, and awareness plan in place gives employers the ability to create a “human firewall” by empowering employees to recognize and avoid common cyber security threats through ongoing training. Typically, employee cybersecurity training will educate and test your employees on identifying common threat tactics like social engineering, phishing, spoofing, and ransomware.

Why you need a security education, training, and awareness plan

According to KnowBe4, more than 90% of successful attacks against businesses originate from phishing. In addition, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) 2023 report calls attention to the danger businesses face with business email compromise (BEC). Reported losses in 2023 due to business email compromise were nearly $3 billion, representing a 7% increase over 2022’s already staggering total of $2.7 billion.

Cyber-attacks are on the rise and the cost to businesses is escalating. Unfortunately, many of those attacks are successful thanks to a major source of risk for every business – its employees. From opening an email, to clicking on an attachment, to transferring funds, employees are a major driver of risk for businesses. But it’s a risk that can be mitigated effectively and affordably with a security education training and awareness plan.

A security education, training, and awareness plan is worth the investment

It’s hard to assign a dollar amount to the return on investment (ROI) of employee cybersecurity training when you’re measuring the effects of something that DIDN’T happen. Proactive security education, training, and awareness is like an insurance policy in the way it limits future potential damages. With today’s threat landscape, a cyber-attack is practically a given, so employee cybersecurity training is an insurance policy that isn’t optional.

Establishing a security education, training, and awareness plan decreases the likelihood you will be breached, and the amount this can save your organization is invaluable. The average cost of a data breach is $4.24 million. Even worse, according to the National Cyber Security Alliance, 60% of small and midsized companies will go out of business within six months of a ransomware attack.

Take a closer look at the hidden costs of doing nothing and facing the aftermath of a cyber-attack.

• Disinfecting workstations and networks. The labor associated with cleaning and reimaging infected endpoints from constant attacks.
• Restoration. It takes an average of 80 days to contain a data breach. Remediation and clean-up costs add up quickly, especially if your team is already stretched thin.
• Downtime and lost productivity. Employee downtime and revenue loss per minute, per hour, or per day can be significant.
• Reputation. There are direct and indirect costs of a security incident to your customers, suppliers, and stakeholders. Your organization may be at risk of fines, lawsuits, and damaged customer trust.

According to Osterman Research, employee cybersecurity training dramatically decreases the costs that organizations spend on tasks such as disinfecting workstations and repairing damages in the aftermath of a cyber-attack. It calculated the following ROIs for implementing a security education training and awareness plan:

• Small and midsize businesses see an ROI of 69%.
• Larger organizations see an ROI of 562%.

An effective employee cybersecurity training program can greatly decrease the impact of cyber-attacks on your bottom line and bring you a significant return on your investment. For small and midsized businesses especially, avoiding an attack could be a matter of survival. But even for larger organizations that may be able to absorb some of the cost, not having to divert budgets to deal with security incidents means more money available for growing their business.

Improve your organization’s security culture

The bad guys go after your employees because all too often, your employees are easy to trick. Your employees need to be able to recognize risky situations and act accordingly.

With our security education, training, and awareness plan, Locknet uses state-of-the-art training and engages our security team to help you define your online education campaign, schedule simulated attacks, and provide the necessary reporting for compliance requirements.

Locknet’s employee cybersecurity training arms your employees with the knowledge they need:

• Self-service enrollment – employees can take the training when it fits in their schedule
• Online training includes case studies, live demonstration videos, and short tests
• Quizzes at the end of each module confirm employees have retained the information
• Audits before and after training to assess the impact
• Large selection of modules and courses
• Monthly phishing security tests
• Monthly email exposure checks
• Access to administrative portal

Locknet’s team of trusted Managed IT professionals can help you create a “human firewall” of both technology and training to improve your organization’s security posture.

Cybersecurity Training for Employees — Arm your employees with knowledge to identify cyber attacks, including social engineering, phishing, spoofing and ransomware.