As cybercriminals continue to change their tactics to compromise systems and access sensitive data, improving security culture within organizations is critical to reducing certain vulnerabilities and strengthening disaster recovery efforts during cyberattacks, according to experts from global cybersecurity leader Secureworks .
Safety culture is generally defined as the norms, beliefs and values inherent in an organization's day-to-day operations, including the safety knowledge, attitudes and behaviors of its employees.
It covers all aspects of security, including cybersecurity, information security, physical security, human security, and organizational elements such as policies, procedures, and governance.
Typical internal culture mistakes include a punitive workplace, lack of personal identity, and seeing cybersecurity as someone else's problem.
If an organization has a culture of blame, where employees are blamed or punished for inadvertently participating in a cyber breach, this can put the organization at further risk as other employees may be afraid to speak up or cover up their actions. Mistakes, leading to data breaches causing huge losses.
Cybercriminals are becoming increasingly innovative in the way they compromise systems and access data, and they exploit human error to do so.
If employees realize they may have clicked on a risky link that later appears unusual, or they believe they have made a mistake, they may be reluctant to report this for fear of being fired.
If such breaches do occur, and the security culture is supportive because employees feel safe reporting incidents or behavior to the cybersecurity team, then this will help the cyber team quickly identify and contain the attack, and stop bad behavior The recipient gains further access to the network and important data.
A recent Secureworks incident response report noted a significant increase in business email compromise (BEC) incidents, which will double in 2022, surpassing ransomware as the most common financially motivated cyber threat to organizations.
The increase in BEC incidents can be attributed to a surge in successful phishing campaigns.
To improve an organization's security culture, it is imperative to help all employees understand their role in keeping their digital identities safe.
This isn't necessarily to provide networking training, but more broadly to help everyone in the organization understand their responsibility to report anything suspicious.
There is no perfect approach to cybersecurity, as cybercriminals know that IT-based protections are getting better and so are turning to human-made attacks like ransomware and BEC.
By empowering analysts to investigate authentication fatigue and having them receive meaningful training that provides lessons learned for everyone, these are some of the ways organizations can further improve their security culture.
For organizations with large IT teams, partnering with a network security service provider such as Secureworks will give them complete visibility into their environment, allowing them to identify attacks immediately and quickly stop them from progressing further.
At the end of the day, we all have a role to play in protecting our people and data; it shouldn't just fall on the shoulders of cyber teams.
By fostering a supportive security culture where all employees feel empowered to report cyber incidents, it will go a long way towards avoiding costly breaches.