Security Awareness Training: How To Get Started

By Dan Fox, Webroot

In the past, security awareness training for user education—i.e. empowering users to make more savvy IT decisions in their daily routines—was considered a “nice to have,” not a necessity. The decision to adopt user education was typically passed over because of budget, lack of in-house expertise, and the general lack of availability of high-quality, low-cost, computer-based training. In particular, small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) have suffered from these types of constraints, compared to larger, more resource rich organizations.

Today, it’s clear that end user education isn’t just “nice to have,” and SMBs know it. As recently as August of 2017, a Better Business Bureau study on the State of Cybersecurity revealed that almost half of SMBs with 50 employees and under regard security awareness training among their top 3 security expenditures, alongside firewalls and endpoint protection.

The increase in interest and budget allocation for end user education is understandable. On average, SMBs face $80,000 in annual losses following a ransomware or data loss breach. Users are on the front lines of your business, and even the most advanced security can’t stop them from willingly, if unwittingly, handing over sensitive access credentials. If you’re not educating your users, then you are putting your organization at an unnecessary and costly risk.

Here are a few tips for managed service providers (MSPs) and SMBs on getting started with end user education: