Creating a Culture of Cybersecurity in The Workplace

Security is paramount for the survival of your business. With more endpoints and higher incidents of insider threats, it is important that you create an environment where workers always consider the security implications of their actions. Here are a few guidelines on how to build a culture of security at your workplace.

The Role of Recruitment

The most important step in maintaining a culture of cybersecurity in your business is getting the right persons from the start. Individuals who are lax and who do not see the dangers that a weak password pose will forever leave you playing catch-up with cybercriminals. At the recruitment stage, HR should articulate the company’s security policy before and during any on-boarding session. Matters regarding Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) should be tabled from the start.

Security Over Convenience

Whether it is a new application that is being rolled out or you are offering internet access to visitors on your premises, your decisions should not ignore the security implications of your actions. Management and administrators should by all means lead the charge by holding department heads accountable. HR heads should plan regular security refresher courses for employees. Sales teams must always be aware of the dangers posed by sharing sensitive data in the Client Relationship Manager software. For staff in product development, questions about security risks should be properly addressed before they are released or introduced to the workplace. The key takeaway is that you should not implement any policy just because it is cheap and available. Neither should you deploy products because they are popular. Often, such decisions have dire implications for your company’s cybersecurity and could cost you dearly.

Build a Sustainable Cybersecurity Team

Creating a motivating environment where personal success is celebrated and rewarded helps in creating a very congenial working environment. For your company’s cybersecurity, providing support structures that empowers your staff is the key to them enjoying job-satisfaction. Outside the IT department, all workers should be seen to be applying themselves in matters of security. This creates a sense of inclusion in IT and minimizes the hurdles in encouraging others to adopt more security-minded protocols. the overall effect is a willing IT department and a company-wide cooperative workforce.

Promote Safe Online Behaviour Outside Work

Many of the bad security habits employees exhibit are learned from outside the workplace. For staff, it could be difficult to switch between good cybersecurity behaviour when in the office and bad behaviour when out of it. To ensure the negative practices do not spill over to the workplace, it is important that administrators educate workers on general online safety measures. For example, encourage workers to use separate passwords across all accounts; they should know and understand to change them regularly too. Educate them on the dangers of public hotspots even for personal activities. Also, engage them on the need to delete apps they are no longer using; apps that are not used are rarely updated, and apps that are not updated serve as channels for cybercriminals to compromise security. This is especially true if you encourage BYOD policy at the workplace.

Embrace Collaboration

Cybercriminals are getting smarter. They are employing more advanced forms of attack to compromise your cybersecurity. To stay ahead of the curve, it’s important to collaborate with your staff at all levels. Workers need to know not only what security steps they should take, but why they need to take them. Also, relying solely on Artificial Intelligence and machine learning to predict anomalous behaviour in online systems could leave you blind to real human actions lurking in the background. Human effort is able to understand the ingenuity of cybercriminals more and, armed with the right AI tools, could prevent a cybersecurity incident before it happens.

Culture Builds Over Time

Building a culture of security at your workplace requires more than a few tries. It takes consistent efforts and constant review of progress to make any headway. To create the culture of cybersecurity consciousness in your workforce, you should create an environment where security lessons can be easily repeated; gamification is a useful tool for this, and can encourage participation especially where leader-boards are present. Also, creating a dual communication channel that allows for dialogue would create a cybersecurity culture that has a stronger impact. If your staff are able to communicate their challenges, it could feed into your corporate cybersecurity plans.

Building a workforce that is cyber-aware is not impossible. With a clearly-defined strategy that incorporates collaboration and involves all layers of management, you could create a culture that appreciates the importance of cybersecurity.