Make your remote workforce safer with cyber awareness training and micro-learning

It seems that every day, our work environment continues to get more dependent on technology. For example, just take a look at your office computer screen and notice all the apps you need to run your job from one central location.  As more employees find themselves working remotely, and with such easy access to information utilizing the Internet from home, cyberattacks have become a major concern. Cyber Awareness Training is a tool that can help reduce this risk by teaching employees about how phishing scams work, what they need to look out for when using social media at work, and other important topics related to cybersecurity. It’s time for your business to implement Computer-Based Cyber Awareness Training! 

What is cyber awareness training and why should you care about it? 
Cyber Awareness Training is a cost-effective way to protect against cyber attacks. Implementing Computer-Based Cyber Awareness Training can help reduce the risk that your company will be hacked or have their data breached. It also helps keep up with compliance standards and protects the intellectual property, the uptime of your computer systems, and your client data. 

Let’s face it Cyber Attacks have exploded over the last 15 months during the pandemic and the move to a remote workforce has increased the attack surface significantly. Over the last 5 months we’ve heard about the SolarWinds Supply Chain Attack we’ve also heard about the cyber threats to critical infrastructure and the computer network of Colonial Pipeline as an example.  

Many of the newly revised compliance requirements and the official government organization CISA and the United States Department of Defense have mandated Cyber Awareness Programs as part of the new vendor risk management program with the new CMMC Compliance requirement

.  

The fact is, Cyber Awareness Training has become essential for all businesses in the private sector, public sector (State, Local and Federal government), but not many companies have implemented it. Some of the reasons it hasn’t been implemented are because it’s not a high priority, or employees are resistant to the idea.  

Research shows that organizations that use Computer Based Cyber Awareness Training see ROI as high as 400% because it trains employees to quickly identify phishing scams and other cyber attacks with the threat level they pose before opening any attachments or clicking on a malicious link in a spear-phishing email. 

Cyber Awareness Training doesn’t have to be done during working hours – in fact, it can take place outside of work and on company time with the use of micro-learning.

Why micro-learning is the best way to get your remote workforce up-to-date on security, privacy, and legal issues 
The micro-learning technique encourages employees to learn cybersecurity information in easy-to-understand short bits that are simple to recall later. Instead of taking employees away from their jobs for hours or days at a time with a fire hose full of information they soon forget, micro-learning sessions are easy to digest, and can become a convenient part of an employee’s normal routine.  

What is micro-learning? 

Learning is presented in short sessions. 
Each session is narrowly focused. 
Accessing the session is convenient and frictionless.  
Each session has a clear and practical application. 
A performance-based measuring system gauges improvement.  
It must drive a culture of ongoing learning.  
Micro-learning is optimized for retention, and specifically how the brain learns about things that may need to be recalled later on, unexpectedly, and under stressful conditions. That makes micro-learning ideal for security awareness education. Micro-learning ensures employees will recognize and be prepared to respond to the signs of an attempted attack, months or years after their training, even when they’re fully engaged in their day-to-day work.  

How to implement a successful micro-learning strategy for your business  
Cyber security experts report 85% of data breaches resulting from social engineering attacks and human error; employees are continuously targeted by cybercriminals. Potential threats and bad actors increasingly show up in your email, call on the phone, and find other methods to get in direct contact. 

The first step is to understand the challenges of cyberattacks and determine how prevalent they are in your industry.  

Next, you need to create an action plan that identifies what resources you will need before moving forward with the implementation strategy. Make a list of the existing cybersecurity knowledge of your employees and decide what you should train them on.  

Knowing what your employees know and don’t know is the key to success for your organization.  

After training, you need to have a plan for ongoing education because cyberattacks never stop coming and neither should your knowledge of them. Cyber awareness training can be done in short bursts, so it won’t seem like an interruption when people are on the job.  

The benefits of using a dedicated platform for delivering content 
All too often employees are considered the problem, or the weakest link, and get blamed for being unprepared and falling for a clever attack. Rarely do businesses look at the bigger picture and evaluate whether their training tools are effectively educating and preparing people for the threats they may encounter. Security awareness training tools are not all the same. The methodology, strategies, and development behind them can have a significant impact on the results they produce. 

A holistic, skills-based approach that incorporates short-session learning techniques is proven to lead to the best results. Cybersecurity training should be interactive, engaging, and employ game-based elements to make learning fun. Short sessions that teach one or two skills at a time are more effective than long monotonous lectures. 

Micro-learning is an emerging approach for delivering content in short, focused bursts of information over the course of days or weeks rather than a single class or an annual approach to training. Deploying effective platform for Cyber Security Awareness Training is critical to reducing your cyber threat and risks to your organization. It allows you to automate your testing and employee evaluation process, develop a way to show the impact of Cyber Awareness Training, and monitor your team’s progress. 

Some of the NCX Group Cyber Awareness Training Platform Benefits  
Deliver engaging and relevant security awareness training
Our security awareness solution suits companies of all sizes and features highly engaging content based on real world incidents.
Our powerful LMS uses dynamic enrollment, continuous risk assessment, engagement and knowledge testing to deliver real results.
Perform regular spear phishing simulations
Our phishing campaigns highlight email phishing risks and train staff on how to avoid them. Send practical simulations to your team to prepare for the email scams targeting your business.  
Phishing simulations allow staff to experience the methods hackers use in a safe and constructive way. Using our monthly phishing campaigns, we’ve seen an average 80% reduction in risk from baseline readings within only 8 months! 

Additional Benefits of the NCX Group Cyber Awareness Training Platform 

Real World Templates
Use the same templates that hackers are using. Choose from our extensive library of phishing templates, which is regularly updated to mimic current threats. 

Measure Risk Reduction 
With monthly campaign and training reporting, NCX Group provides a concise breakdown of each phishing simulation and the staff/departments that are at-risk.  

Advanced Tracking 
Our advanced tracking engine provides accurate reporting on all unsafe opens, clicks, replies and downloads made within our phishing simulations. 

Detailed Campaign Reporting 
Access reporting that provides insights and action-points based on campaign results. Drill-down into specific reports and export data as you see fit for presentations and board meetings. 

Quality Over Quantity 
Stop sending out generic phishing content. Our campaigns use industry-specific spear phishing content that emulates real-world scenarios and prepares you for realistic attacks. The NCX Group micro-learning approach will improve your internal threat intelligence.  

Build a Cyber Resilient Culture 
NCX Group provides regular and relevant phishing simulations, to foster a supportive and engaging cyber resilient culture.  

Today’s Cyber Threat, Computer Networks, Users and Final Thoughts 
Organizations everywhere struggle to reduce the risk of cyberattacks—especially attacks targeting their employees.  

Every day, highly motivated threat actors set their sights on employees who are unprepared to defend themselves. Instead of seeing employees as teachable, contributing members of a united front against cyber risk (and social engineers), employers often dismiss them as untrainable or as an unsolvable part of the risk equation.  

NCX Group believes that you can prepare and equip your employees to reduce cyber risk when their awareness training program is built on micro-learning and overseen by awareness experts.  

Micro-learning ensures that employees are regularly informed about the latest threats and how to stop them at the point of attack.  
Awareness coaching provides expertise and guidance to security teams looking to mature their awareness program, sustain new, long-term employee behavior, and foster a culture of security within their organization.  
Here’s the bottom-line, if you are a business of any size that relies on the internet for your connectivity, operations, customer service and productivity, this article is informing you of how cyber awareness training and micro-learning help to make sure that your employees can keep their work and personal information safe and see in real time those subtle indicators that can secure your network and stay safely connected.  

Cyber awareness training is important because it helps people understand what they need in order to maintain security in today’s digital world.  

At NCX Group, we offer micro-learning courses, so you don’t have to worry about spending hours reading through manuals or watching long videos – we break down all of the info into bite size chunks with interactive quizzes at the end of each module!  

So, if you’re looking for an easy way to get started implementing cyber awareness training throughout your company, give our free trial a try! You’ll be glad you did.