I’ve consulted on cybersecurity with companies as large as 70,000 employees here in MD and DC over the last decade.
And one of the worries I see in companies big and small is their fear of data breaches.
27.9% of businesses experience data breaches each year, and 9.6% of those who suffer a breach go out of business.
The average financial cost is in the neighborhood of $8.19m, and 93.8% of the time, they’re caused by human error.
You may have heard about the ransom of Baltimore back in May.
Hackers infiltrated Baltimore’s government through an innocent-looking email with ransomware called “RobbinHood”.
They held the city ransom asking for $70,000 after infiltrating computer systems and shutting down most of their servers.
Services in the city came to a standstill and the damage clocked in at around $18.2 million.
And when I spoke with their security staff in the weeks following the attack, they told me this:
“Most companies have workforces that do not take security seriously.”
“The risk of a security related failure due to human negligence seems to outweigh almost everything else.”
That’s a tough position to be in.
And building a security culture is tough, believe me.
But the protection you get from building up a “human firewall” trumps any other approach.
You can reduce the likelihood of data breaches and cyber incidents with strong security culture.
And with a little preparation, you can seriously reduce the financial impact of a data breach to your business.
That means making sure you have the most important elements of a strong security culture.
So what are the critical elements for a strong security culture?
1. Security awareness training videos and quizzes because you want all of your coworkers to recognize and avoid threats.
2. Comprehensive cybersecurity checklists to guide you so you can quickly and efficiently minimize organizational risk.
3. Phishing tools because you want to know exactly how susceptible your coworkers are to attacks.
4. Custom cybersecurity planning to guide you based on the needs of your business so your unique needs such as HIPAA or PCI-DSS compliance are met.
That’s a lot to put together, especially for smaller organizations.
That’s why I put together a complete security awareness training video course that covers 74 topics critical to using technology safely.
P.S. If you’re looking for a more comprehensive solution, I also offer Security-Culture-as-a-Service, which includes all of the resources I outlined above ready to use.
Feel free to contact me directly through “david at hailbytes.com”
