Here are six steps to enable businesses to build a cybersecurity culture that leads to sustainable resilience:
🔒 Leaders Need To Lead - total support from senior leadership and strong messaging is vital when trying to cultivate a cybersecurity culture. Everyone should know the role they play in mitigating risks and maintaining security resilience, and how cybersecurity affects the goals and operations of the business. Accountability should live and breathe from the top down.
🔒 Embed Security - security needs to be at the heart of all processes and projects, so security is at the forefront for everyone involved. Managers and employees need to view security protocols as an important step in what they do, which aids an effective cybersecurity culture.
🔒 Practice Makes Perfect - if a business wants to ensure that security is embedded inside its processes and protocols, then everyone will need to practice good security hygiene so it becomes business as usual. Reviewing what colleagues know, and how they react to certain situations, and then supporting them through development sessions, is key to developing best practices and promoting a business's security culture.
🔒 Applied Learning - desktop exercises involving authentic cyber incidents, will allow businesses to identify weaknesses and gaps in communication, knowledge, or technical vulnerabilities. Going through the process of dealing with a simulated incident scenario and gaining hands-on training is vital to facilitate knowledge and awareness.
🔒 Communication Tactics - cybersecurity insights and messages need to be shared across the business in as many ways as possible. Hints and tips in a newsletter format, pop-up messages on a laptop, and even static messaging in office or home-work spaces are valuable methods to build awareness.
🔒 Celebrate and Recognise Great Behaviour - promote positive security actions taken by team members, such as reporting phishing emails and not clicking malicious URLs. Recognition helps shape security culture and allows employees to view it as a priority and responsibility. Equally, when team members click on the wrong URL for example, providing real-time support to help them spot this in the future is very important.
Following these 'top-down' steps will help security awareness become embedded into the culture and DNA of a business, making it more resilient to cyberattacks. If we can assist in any way then please get in contact.