How to Train Employees to Be Smart with IT Security

When you’re a business owner, you’re always facing IT and cyber threats. Even if they’re not imminent, there is always the possibility that a business is going to be targeted and this can destroy your brand and reputation with your customers, depending on the severity of the situation.

While it is important that you have excellent safeguards in place, such as your IT security software solutions and email security, that’s not enough. You also need to train your employees on IT security best practices and importance, because they’re ultimately one of your biggest security strengths if they’re well-trained.

The following are some tips to help you prepare your employees for any and all IT security threats they might face on the job.

Set Defined Parameters

So many of the biggest IT security threats businesses face in today’s environment are because employees make mistakes or simply aren’t aware of what they shouldn’t be doing.

As a business owner, it’s essential that you have clearly defined guidelines for your employees, which might include not using social media at work for example or using business computers for certain activities.

The more you can define the guidelines, the less likely your employees are to make an accidental IT mistake.

Let Employees Know How Important Their Role Is

Employees have the tendency to think they’re not necessarily that important in the grand scheme of IT security, or they may not even realize the importance of the data they have access to. As part of your comprehensive training, make sure you let them know first and foremost what a responsibility they have to protect data and information, and also the importance of their general role.

You need to highlight their obligations to the business, but also their legal obligations.

Encourage Employees to Speak Up

Employees should have a clear route to report any IT issues or security red flags that might come up. Let employees know during training that they should not only be empowered to report anything they see, but also give them instructions as to how to do that.

Train Employees Thoroughly On Topics Related to Email

Email is something that most of your employees probably access and use all day, but it can also be one of the biggest threat sources regarding IT security. Make sure that your employee training involves plenty of information on email. Let employees know how to recognize potential scams, and understand when something might be out of the ordinary.

There should also be training on specific topics such as online fraud and phishing.

As a final note, when you’re training employees on overall IT security, don’t forget about mobile device best practices. There should be clear-cut mobile device policies for using company or personal devices, and how data and information are accessed on them.

When you have a business, training your employees on IT security is something that should not only be done in an in-depth way, but you should regularly refresh training because issues surrounding these topics tend to change and evolve quickly.