Free Resources to Help Your Team Promote Cybersecurity Awareness Month
Next month is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, a chance for you to improve security education and awareness in your organization, and reinforce the importance of prioritizing security to your employees.
To help you make Cybersecurity Awareness Month a success, we’ve put together a collection of free resources that you can use to spread the word in your organization.
Why is Cybersecurity Awareness Month Important?
Before we dive into the free resources, we first want to cover the significance of cybersecurity awareness month. You see, more often than not, cyber-attacks aren’t the result of complex undertakings by sophisticated cyber-criminals.
A lot of today’s attacks are actually very basic; they rely on human error or negligence for success. In line with this, research shows 90% of data breaches are a result of attacks that directly target employees.
For example, one of the top causes of data breaches today is phishing, in which a hacker sends a fraudulent email to an employee, posing as a legitimate organization or individual. If one of the employees clicks the phishing email, you could end up losing sensitive data or suffering a malware attack.
To the untrained eye, phishing emails look like the real thing, which is why it’s so important to train employees on how to spot these attacks and other threats.
Resources To Know About For Cybersecurity Awareness Month
Here are some free resources you can use to promote cybersecurity awareness month in your company.
Cyber Explore: The Fundamental of Cyber
Cyber Explore was created by The National Counterintelligence and Security Center. Cyber Explore – The Fundamentals is a group of free modules, providing high-level details about common cyber-attacks and how to defend against them.
The language in this resource can get a little technical, but it’s well worth including to educate your employees on the foundations of security.
Department Of Health And Human Services Security Awareness Training
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) enforces the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), a data privacy law that governs healthcare entities.
The body has released a trove of free security awareness resources to help healthcare organizations better protect personal health information (PHI), but the materials are useful for companies across sectors.
Department of Defense (DoD) Cyber Exchange
The DoD Cyber Exchange is brimming with valuable articles and courses to help organizations improve their security posture. The website can be a little overwhelming – there’s a lot of content!
With that in mind, we advise focusing on the following:
- Cyber Awareness Challenge
- Social Networking and Your Online Identity
- Identifying and Safeguarding Personally Identifiable Information (PII)
- Phishing Awareness
Federal Virtual Training Environment (FedVTE)
FedVTE is the brainchild of the US Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). You can find many free online courses, focused on a range of different security aspects.
Note, not all of the training here will be suitable for the average employee. Some of the courses are for security professionals or employees who are responsible for aspects of security, such as incident response team members.
Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (CDSE)
The CDSE training website has some great resources you can use to improve security awareness, including awareness games and posters.
Sans Security Awareness Work-From-Home Deployment Kit
If your employees work from home, then it’s well worth including some form of security training for remote working. This is where the SANS Security Awareness Work-from-Home Deployment Kit can be super helpful.
The kit comes with a deployment guide, along with lots of tips and tricks to help employees work from home safely.
Wizer Security Awareness Platform
Wizer is a dedicated security training platform, offering videos, quizzes and tutorials to help employees improve security awareness.
Some of the content on Wizer is free, but to unlock access to everything you will need to purchase a subscription.
Making The Most Of These Free Resources
As you can see, there are lots of free resources out there for Cybersecurity Awareness Month! We recommend being strategic about how you use this content. You don’t want to overload your employees with too much information.
Instead, plot out a cybersecurity awareness month communications plan and timetable, so your employees know what to expect and stay engaged.
We advise using a mixture of online training and games, along with posters and email updates to keep momentum up throughout the month.
Remember, Security Awareness Shouldn’t Be Limited To One Month!
Finally, it’s crucial to remember that security awareness should be part of your culture. This is the best way to reduce the likelihood of cyber-attacks and data branches caused by human error.
We can help you to enhance your security posture through network monitoring and anti-virus services that complement employee security training.
Contact us today online or call 407-536-8381 to learn more.