The best ways to guarantee your company’s email security
With cyber security breaches reaching record-high levels in a variety of industries last year, the need to protect your company’s email accounts is as relevant as ever. Although, how a business and its employees can go about it from a technical side isn’t necessarily very clear. Because of this, the best solution is arguably to treat email security as a problem concerning human error, and thus the right training and attitude to digital security is vital.
Personalised Training
According to some surveys, up to 25% of firms still have no email security training programs in place. This is a major problem, given poor employee behaviour is usually the top concern for companies when it comes to being secure online.
However, whilst having training in place is essential, it’s vital that this program is actually effective. If your email security training is fairly generic, such as a ‘one-size-fits-all online course, is likely to be quickly forgotten. So, personalising training with threats that could be relevant to your industry is more effective in teaching employees how to protect their work email accounts from scams or hacking.
Incentivise
Emphasising the pitfalls of poor cyber security and its victims, like those who get scammed online or hacked effortlessly, can be effective but it’s also easy. What’s tougher, but likely to get better results from your employees, is positive reinforcement. For instance, setting up a rewards system for those who correctly point out or address digital vulnerabilities could motivate your staff notably more than some training programs will.
More Accountability
Once training and appropriate incentives are in place, putting the responsibility of improved email security on individuals and company departments should be the next solution. With positive reinforcement in place, employees are given a stake in the company’s cyber security. But making departments accountable will make them more conscious of the human errors they have put training in place to prevent. This should help create a culture of self-responsibility when it comes to digital threats, increasing your firm’s email security for the long-term.
