It’s that time of year again when organisations across Europe and the USA participate in the now annual Cyber Security Awareness Month, and this year the focus is on the dangers posed by phishing and ransomware attacks. 

See yourself in cyber 

The main theme of this year’s awareness month is titled ‘see yourself in cyber’ and aims to focus on the vital role everybody from the CISO (Chief Information Security Officer) down to the office intern plays in keeping an organisation safe from cyber threats. 

Cyber Security Awareness Month is a great opportunity for businesses of all shapes and sizes to push the issue to the fore and promote better policies for employee awareness training.  

It’s not just cybersecurity that employees should receive training on either. Physical security training and awareness still needs to be taught to employees as in many cases a lapse in this can lead to cybersecurity breaches.  

Why should you take part in National Cyber Security Awareness Month? 

Most cyber-attacks are not sophisticated or involve high tech gizmos to achieve. All it takes for a system to be compromised is an employee accidentally (or willingly) handing over their account details to a malicious actor.  

There’s long been an issue with businesses believing that they will not fall victim to a cyber-attack either because they think they’re too small to be a target, or simply that they don’t think they have anything a hacker would want. Hackers take advantage of this and know how to exploit it. They don’t just target the big companies, instead they seek out the easiest prey, which unfortunately, often turns out to be smaller to medium sized businesses.  

According to the Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2022 published earlier this year, 83% of UK businesses have been targeted by phishing scams. This is a huge number and one that isn’t showing any signs of diminishing. 

Phishing remains the most popular form of cyber-attack simply because it is easy, and it works. By targeting employees who could potentially have read and write access to sensitive data a hacker can trick them into gaining access to it. Often, they do this by sending emails that look legitimate but in fact contain malicious links or malware that then allow the attacker to compromise a network.  

With phishing and ransomware incidents showing no signs of decline cybersecurity awareness and training are vital for businesses and organisations of all sizes.  

An organisation’s workforce is the front line of defence in keeping many types of cyber-attacks at bay. Companies are now understanding that investing in employee awareness training is vital in reducing the number of entry points that threat actors have when infiltrating an enterprise network. 

Use Cyber Security Awareness Month to ensure you and your employees are up to the task of keeping the hackers at bay. 

As hacker tactics evolve, so should your business’ ability to detect and defend against them.  Contact an Integrity360 advisor to learn more.