Four Roadblocks To Increasing Employee Security Through User Training

By Kyle Fiehler, Webroot

We’ve been doing our homework, and two things seem to be true about cybersecurity awareness training simultaneously:

1. It can be very effective at protecting businesses from one of the most common security threats they face (the majority, according to the Ponemon Institute). Namely, phishing.
2. MSPs, often the single most reliable source of cybersecurity for small business, want to offer training as a part of their services but unwillingness on the part of their clients prevents them from doing so.

If you know, as we do, that one in three American workers admits to clicking on a phishing link in the past year, what’s the reason for such reluctance? Here are four we commonly encounter and how to overcome them.

The “higher-ups” don’t see the value of training

For (the lucky) companies who’ve yet to be hit by a significant cyberattack, security awareness training may not hold obvious value. After all, very few organizations have zero cybersecurity measures in place. “What’s my endpoint security for, anyway?” “Threats are stopped by my firewall.” So the thinking goes…

Even if they see the need for user training from cybersecurity standpoint, some small businesses aren’t sure it’s worth the effort. IT budgets are often strained as it is, and couldn’t those dollars be better spent on the latest high-tech trend in the cyber defense industry?