How to Establish a Strong Cybersecurity Culture During a Pandemic

How to Establish a Strong Cybersecurity Culture During a Pandemic

To many businesses, a pandemic is already a global disaster, and although you might be aware that companies are more vulnerable to cyber threats during pandemics like the coronavirus (COVID-19), organizations like yours may not understand that a critical aspect of your business’ protection starts with ensuring employees are on board and that you have a unified cybersecurity culture set in place. Here’s how to establish a strong cybersecurity culture during a pandemic.

Conduct Employee Cybersecurity Training

It’s crucial to remember that wherever your business is operating, your cybersecurity culture is also operating and during a pandemic, your network is likely everywhere waiting for cybercriminals to prey on. This makes employee cybersecurity training even more important than ever. To ensure complete success, training needs to become a company norm. So, what does this training need to look like? It should be both educational and engaging. It could include video modules and quick assessments every few months to keep them up to date on what to look for—whether that’s examples of common phishing emails or fake advertising on platforms like Facebook. Cybersecurity training is imperative when there is a pandemic because cybercriminals love a crisis to capitalize on. This means that your employees are far more likely to receive phishing or ransomware emails that contain suspicious links or attachments.

This is why educating them on email security and social media attacks is so important to the security of your business. Use real-life examples of what companies typically suffer from and make sure to conduct training for new hires and existing employees. Common warning signs to watch out for might contain pandemic-focused subject lines of emails, grammatical errors, and small changes to URLs and links. Include these examples in your training so that employees pay closer attention when working remotely.  To hold them accountable, make it a requirement and include a deadline for when the training must be completed. Ultimately, human error is one of the biggest causes of cyber threats to corporations, yet it can also be the easiest problem to fix.

Instill a Disaster Recovery Plan

Part of your pandemic plan and cybersecurity culture should include what your organization would do in the event of a disaster. In this case, the disaster would be common cyberattacks. Start by investing in Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS), powered by Veeam Cloud Connect. In addition to decreasing downtime, this will ensure your critical data is replicated offsite and can easily be restored, should your company become a victim. Your company can also implement a disaster recovery functional team to conduct security audits and handle recovery measures if a disaster does take place.

When it comes to your employees, provide them with external hard drives to backup their files. Also, administer checklists of what to do if they trigger or suspect a security breach. As we mentioned above, cybersecurity training plays a huge role in your disaster recovery plan. Having multiple protocols in place and always being prepared will prevent catastrophic data loss and a stronger security culture, especially during a pandemic like COVID-19. Check out the response to the current coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Set Roles and Boundaries

Setting roles and boundaries is imperative to the safety and efficiency of any company, however, it’s especially important during more vulnerable times like a pandemic. It’s essential to establish who is responsible for training employees, who they report to for security concerns, and who is in constant communication with your cloud service provider. Make sure to also establish and limit who has access to company passwords, credit card information, important physical files, and even who can access your social media channels. These are all key ingredients to a strong cybersecurity culture and overall business model.

Require Strong Passwords and Multi-Factor Authentication

Lacking strong passwords means that there’s a higher chance for a hacker to enter a network that your employee is remotely working in, which ultimately means your entire network and organization are at risk. That is why strong passwords are a must-have for any business. When having employees create passwords, provide a list of requirements that their passwords must meet to ensure consistency across the board.

Additionally, Multi-Factor Authentication should be instilled in your employee’s login processes. This could look like verification codes, security questions, or one-time tokens. Requiring both strong passwords and multi-factor authentication are simple yet effective ways to reduce the likelihood of cybercriminals infecting your network and will increase your overall security and pandemic plan.

Why Cyber Sainik Should be a Part of your Cybersecurity Culture

Aside from preventative cloud solutions like Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) and Security as a Service (SECaaS) to ensure top-of-the-line security throughout your business, Cyber Sainik also comes equipped with professionals who can offer security consulting. This can include having conversations about implementing efficient cybersecurity training and helping you set roles and boundaries throughout your organization.

For a lot of businesses, implementing things like cybersecurity training is sometimes easier said than done. As a business owner or decision maker, you yourself might need training first before you can successfully administer that across your organization. This is how Cyber Sainik sets itself apart from other cloud service providers. We provide the necessary cloud solutions to ensure business protection, in addition to 24x7x365 service and support so that vulnerable patches are sealed, and you have more peace of mind. Contact Cyber Sainik today to learn more.

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