The thought of cyber-criminals gaining access to your systems and data is enough to keep most business owners up at night.
All it takes is for one employee to inadvertently click on a phishing link or leave an unattended device logged in, and suddenly your business is wide open to a breach or attack.
Interestingly, it’s not only big businesses that are at risk.
“Small businesses with less than 50 employees have the same level of cybertheft or cyberattack risk as a very large business with more than 20,000 employees.” — Hiscox
For that reason alone, you need to make sure that your cyber defences are as watertight as possible, regardless of the size of your business. Security awareness training should be a key part of your cyber defences.
Here are 5 additional reasons to invest in security awareness training:
1. Data Breaches Are Costly
Let’s start with the most obvious one. If you suffer a data breach, it’s going to cost you. How much it will cost you depends on numerous factors, including the size of the breach, the nature of the stolen data, and the value of the data to both you and the cyber-criminal.
Although it’s difficult to put an exact figure on it, industry giant IBM calculated that the average cost of a data breach in 2021 was $3.86 million. Obviously, a small business stands to lose less than this, but it can still be enough to cause major, potentially business-destroying, problems.
2. Customer Demand
Consumers and clients are becoming more and more aware of cyberthreats. For that reason, they want to feel that any business they deal with is taking cybersecurity seriously.
Security awareness training is the ideal solution. If you show that all of your employees have been trained to a high level in cybersecurity, it can help to improve customer confidence and loyalty.
3. Avoid Reputational Damage
The key to avoiding this kind of expensive reputational damage is to ensure that data breaches don’t happen in the first place. Security awareness training gives employees all the knowledge and tools they need to minimise the risk.
4. Meet Regulatory Compliance
These days, it’s no longer acceptable to do the bare minimum when it comes to protecting data. Regulations such as GDPR in Europe place the cybersecurity focus on businesses.
Security awareness training can help businesses to show that they take cybersecurity and data protection seriously and meet regulatory requirements at the same time.
5. Improve Employee Confidence
Last but not least, offering security awareness training to employees can help to boost their confidence and productivity. Not only will they be more skilled at avoiding data breaches in the workplace, they will also know how to avoid things like phishing scams in their day-to-day lives.
Discover More About Security Awareness Training
If you think that security awareness training will benefit your business, get in touch with one of our expert advisors today.
