How Do We Prevent Hacking Attempts?

You Must Fortify Your Weakest Link

This is a question that many of our clients ask. Despite the antivirus software, firewall technologies and other IT security measures that your business has in place, modern social engineering methods such as phishing can circumvent those measures and prey directly on untrained and unaware staff members. Your weakest link is your users.

Even if risks are managed with the best network security, email threats can still get through on other platforms that your employees use on their network devices. As a result, you can have the best technical safeguards, but the human element makes your IT vulnerable to cyber attacks.

To Get Prevent Being Hacked Train Your Users

It’s essential to train your staff on how to recognize and stop social engineering attacks before they affect your business. Providing Security Awareness Training for employees is the easiest way to get more secure and avoid compromising IT attacks.

However, many businesses still aren’t doing this. As a result, their employees aren’t educated about cybersecurity. They could be checking personal emails, hitting up social media sites, or doing things that leave your business wide open for an attack.

Statistics don’t lie. Canadian businesses are in the hacker’s “bull’s eye.”

Just over one-fifth of Canadian businesses are impacted by a cybersecurity incident.

Canadian companies report spending $14 billion on cybersecurity

Public Safety Canada reports that there’s a possibility of G7-themed phishing campaigns and they remind users to be vigilant when reading or responding to messages received from unknown sources.

These targeted phishing messages called spear-phishing, commonly manipulate the sender field to look like the message is originating from an individual that is known to the recipient.

Your end users are continually being targeted by phishing messages and other business security threats via emails, on social media, and when handling day-to-day functions. Your business faces significant risks unless your users are adequately trained.

Train On More Than Awareness

Unfortunately, even though some businesses offer security training, they often do so in a limited fashion. Traditional forms of security awareness training focus on trying to raise security awareness.

It’s assumed that, if users are aware of the risks, they won’t be at risk of being victimized by hackers. This assumption is false. It’s helpful to raise awareness, but you need to train people to change their behaviour as well.

Train To Change Your Users’ Behaviors

Just increasing security awareness rarely changes users’ behaviours. You can spend days teaching them about security threats, but they’ll go back to their desks, continue working, and ignore security warnings.

The right Security Awareness Training is a formal process that increases your users’ security awareness, elicits secure behaviours, and develops a culture of security. In a secure business culture, employees don’t just try to avoid attacks; they consciously and actively work to prevent them.

For example, phishing emails are designed to do one thing; trick unsuspecting users into taking an action that will in some way benefit the attacker. To combat this, your trained users will change the way they handle emails.

The right training will educate your staff to:

• Know how to identify and address suspicious emails, phishing attempts, social engineering tactics, and more.
• How to use technology without exposing data and other assets to external threats by accident.
• How to respond when they suspect that an attack is occurring or has occurred.

CTECH Can Help

Security Awareness should be just as important to a business operation as any other form of training. It’s critical that you get proactive about training and make it a priority over the long term. Make the decision to train your employees properly.

• You should make cybersecurity a mandatory part of your training processes, such as safety training.
• Ask about cybersecurity training modules that your employees can use in their spare time throughout the day.
• Get training on the latest threats and can train your employees to recognize and avoid them.
• Ensure that if your employees are tricked into clicking a malicious link, they’ll know what to do.

By focusing on awareness, behavioural and cultural change, you can prevent phishing and spear-phishing attacks and fortify your weakest link.

Written by Carl Fransen

posted on August 27, 2019

Carl Fransen

My passion is to make my mark on the world in a positive and lasting way. I want to set an example for my son that his father can compete with integrity in today’s world, be very successful, and leave the world a better place for him.

Combining my technical/business-based education with a long career steadily progressing up the corporate ladder, I decided to build a company that held true to my values. So, I founded and designed the next generation of IT support firm: CTECH Consulting Group Inc. We are a completely automated, cloud-based IT company designed to compete against any other IT firm without the overhead. We promote a lifestyle to all our staff where they can work anywhere, at any time, access any information on any device that is relevant to their job, and collaborate with anyone they want to.