Establish a Security Mentality
Do you remember, that constant invite to a certain meeting in the mail? That you kept ignoring, surely you know the one. It was about the ‘Cyber Security Awareness’ program.
But that’s okay. You must be thinking and saying to yourself ‘Another boring training’ that you must attend and listen. How many times do i need to listen to this?
It’s eight thirty in the morning. You’ve prepped your beverage to wake you up just right. Your screen is windowed to the first quarter of the daily emails, scrolling through a review of tasks. You find the usual unrelated messages. Some from your bank. ‘Win a trip for two!’, ‘Spend xyz to win a brand new car!’ they state.
Alarmingly one of them is not as joyful. This time it’s a request of documents for an update of the bank’s database. Strictly written is the renewal of the information within a specific period of time before they block your card.
You click the link provided, anxious to get it out of the way before the stress and rush gets to you. Abiding by the requirements, a sigh of relief is breathed. That’s one task down.
However, in a matter of minutes, your drowned in messages of fund withdrawals while documents and files vanish into technological oblivion.
You’ve just been ‘Phished’.
A categorical term under Cyber Crime for being baited.”
The world today has changed from how it was, we are on Lockdown, working from home and maintaining social distances due to Covid-19
Moreover Covid-19 makes classroom sessions redundant instead online meetings and trainings have become the culture nowadays, this is enticing to many around us, as people feel more comfortable in attending an event from their cozy quarantines, this is an example of improved cyber accessibility and remote connectivity. We are now more reliant than ever, on the internet and the need to be secure. Cyber criminals use this as an opportunity to exploit the most vulnerable.
Among many of their tactics is a play at psychology. Your information, identity and livelihood are at risk. Traditional Cyber Security measures don’t protect you from the psychological exploitation. Therefore, training users to recognize such tactics is the only way of staying actively protected..
Online trainings may sometimes be more effective than classroom sessions as people felt more comfortable asking questions through the chat window instead of being in the spotlight in an auditorium. I don't believe that organizations should shy away from hosting cyber security awareness sessions now because they cant get people in a room, rather they should use this opportunity to do more focused workshops and sessions for functional groups, maybe HR, finance etc so that the sessions can be more informative and tailored.
While the world is focused on the health and economic threats posed by Covid-19 pandemic, cyber criminals around us undoubtedly are capitalizing on this crisis. There is a significant spike in Phishing attacks and Ransomware attacks as attackers are using Covid-19 as bait to impersonate brands thereby misleading and targeting businesses as well as end-users.
It is very important for us to make sure that we are equipped with an efficient Cybersecurity Awareness Campaigns and Programs, to be able to identify the difference between the fake and the real and to be able to understand what cyber threats are, the impact a cyber attack will have on our business and the steps required to reduce risk and prevent cybercrime infiltrating our online workforce.
