09 Aug Redefine Your IT and Cybersecurity Safety Culture

The Importance of Safety Culture

Every practical IT resource and cybersecurity solution cannot help you if your enterprise lacks a quality safety culture. In other words, without safe and common-sense practices, a business is as vulnerable as ever. Social engineering, phishing, and mishandling of critical data wreak havoc on organizations because the human side of checks and balances is lacking. Therefore, it’s pertinent to focus on building a responsive cybersecurity/IT culture to reinvigorate your defenses.

One of the critical misconceptions regarding good IT and cybersecurity culture is competency. A master’s understanding of IT or security is not required to handle a majority of security issues. Rather it’s the ability to properly detect scam attempts, fraudulent messages, and failing systems that win out long-term.

All about building quality habits

Everything starts with a good habit. It’s erroneous to assume that to build strong safety habits, you start with the strongest foundation immediately. There’s nothing wrong with emphasizing good practices. However, inexperienced or novice staff is less likely to absorb fundamentals that are massive in scope. Starting with small, digestible rules, guidelines, and nuggets of information make a larger impact over time.

For instance, verifying the validity of a message or email is a simple cornerstone of good safety culture. It asks the recipient to pause, evaluate what they’re reading, and ensure a message is safe to access. It also means proper data handling procedures are being followed. As that habit forms, it becomes second nature. These small but critical habits shape the IT and cybersecurity posture of a business, driving safe habits, policies, and management of data.

However, it’s also possible for these habits to have a polarizing effect. When not trained or educated properly, staff members will not follow policy, engage in unsafe behaviors, and undermine IT infrastructure. More so, workers may be resilient to policy training and good habits, taking shortcuts around data management, utilizing non-business-related software/apps (Shadow IT), and lacking good threat awareness.

Dysfunctional security culture

The most dangerous element provoking a business is not outsider threats, it is internal flaws, and a dysfunctional IT/cybersecurity culture. Again, no amount of investment in security suites, pentesting, and comprehensive firewalls will prevent disaster scenarios without a trained, security-minded staff. Addressing the internal “value system” of your IT and cybersecurity staff is essential for long-term health.

Getting control of a broken policy system is important. Not only is it cost-effective – reducing troubleshooting events and dangerous scenarios – it also protects business assets. There are several ways to approach this strategy.

Start with Problem Areas

Before anything, identify the weakest areas of your security culture and infrastructure. In other words, what behaviors and events led to the majority of attacks, data breaches, downtime, and profit loss?

Clarify and Focus

Taking a broad strokes approach towards fixing IT safety culture proves ineffective since you’re trying to do too many things at once. It is therefore important to hone in on what specific areas of your guidelines you want to address and improve.

Rather, ask yourself what behaviors in the business are causing significant harm or danger. This can range from not adhering to security policies/guidelines, a dismissive employee attitude towards established rules, and improper handling of critical business data.

Form a Vision

As you identify problem behaviors, focus on the company’s overall cultural “vision.” Forming a stronger security infrastructure is redundant, as it’s an obvious endpoint. How you want to achieve that and what you’ll do to specifically meet those goals is more important.

For instance, focusing on “phishing scam awareness” can be part of a security culture vision. You want to zone in on aspects of your business security that are weakest. You also want to think of your security culture in long-term ideals. How will you look within six months? How about a year? Changing behaviors and establishing security habits can’t be done overnight, so it’s important to prioritize, set goals, and focus on the biggest challenges first. Create a picture of success so staff and management know what they should strive for.

Engage your Staff

While it is important to stress the critical importance of security culture to employees, they’re unlikely to be as receptive without reward or acknowledgment. Incentivizing your staff in positive ways to follow good security practices is just as important as establishing them.

Bonuses, sharing results of successful security strategies, and highlighting staff members who have adhered to good security habits are ways to actively engage with employees/management.

Conclusion

Remember, adherence to quality IT rules and cybersecurity practices does not require expert knowledge. Like anything, security culture is just about defining good habits.

For additional advice, information, and support for creating a better security culture, reach out for support. Contact Bytagig today for additional info.