How to Inculcate a Culture of Security in your Organization

Mobility has made inroads into businesses across diverse industries and while it is a great initiative to revamp the conventional means of operations, processes it also brings forth concerns that did not exist before. Mobility can be incremental to workforce productivity and engagement and can immensely help business continuity, especially in the trying times such as a pandemic. 

According to Robert Mueller, the director of the FBI, 

“There are only two types of companies, those that have been hacked, or those that will be”

Mobility, or use of technology in general, raises several security challenges and concerns that give organizations’ leadership a tough time combating. As per a survey by Accenture, 68% of business leaders feel their cybersecurity risks are increasing. And this is where establishing data security as a part of your organizational culture steps in. In this article, let us learn indomitable ways to inculcate a culture of security in your organization. 

How to build a culture of security in your organization:

1. Involve and train your employees

Barring the few sets of employees who work exclusively with IT or tech overall, the rest of your workforce is hardly aware of the security challenges. But these employees, for example, your frontline staff are the ones who have access to the most critical data and make heavy use of it. 

Bringing data security into focus, conducting training, and regular sessions to update the employees of the data security challenges, types of attacks, and how to combat them is the first step towards bullet-proofing your data. 

While doing so, it is important to consider that not all your staff will be technologically updated (or interested) quite frankly and it shouldn’t go down as just another drill that employees have to finish every week/month.

Make it fun, interesting, and engaging. Seek help from your content and design teams to create brochures, infographics, and easy-to-consume content and presentations that will keep your employees hooked to the data security sessions and take it seriously.

2. Pay attention to the passwords

According to a study by cybersecurity media, the number of passwords used by humans and machines will cross 300 billion in 2020. That’s a lot of passwords to play around with for the hackers and cybercriminals. For every device that has any sort of corporate data on it, enforce passwords- along with password complexity and type. 

Specify the number of characters, whether or not the password should have alphanumeric combinations and special characters. This will automatically create the need for your employees to be innovative while setting their passwords and it won’t be as sleazy as ‘hello@123’. 

Also, using an MDM tool, you can enforce the password to be changed bi-monthly or at a frequency, your cybersecurity experts deem fit so that in case there’s a gap, it can be recovered before a lot of damage happens.

3. Eliminate the risk of shadow IT

Shadow IT has now become an integral part of the innovation mindset in an organization and while it can serve as an entry point to future IT solutions that the organization can build, it creates several security risks. 

However, it is impossible to limit your employees to in-house IT resources and tools, especially when there are plenty out there that can optimize their tasks and add to their productivity. This includes SaaS applications, browser extensions, and web-based tools that feed onto company data. 

Be open to the tools your employees use (because if they like it, they might find a way to use them anyway), assess the tools for data security, provide better alternatives if any and always be on the top of every tool your employees use to keep the security challenges at bay.

4. Make working from home security-proof

Work from home can bring forth several security concerns since employees are not under the secure network umbrella. From smart home devices lurking into corporate meetings to personal devices being used for sharing work-related documents, the security can go haywire when employees work from home. 

Ensure that you include remote working security challenges in your security plan and create employee awareness around the same. Your data is only as safe and secure as your employees want it to be and hence making that extra effort to inculcate the culture of security in the organization goes a long way.

5. Communicate and demonstrate

Security can be a great matter of skepticism and can overwhelm an employee. If your employees make the use of BYO devices, constant concerns over security can raise doubts over the privacy of employees’ personal data. 

Having a team of security champions led by a CSO can be a game-changer to open up conversations around security without hesitation and subtly assuring the employees about the integrity of their personal data and the onus they have over corporate data security.

Closing lines…

The concerns around security are far from being mitigated and will only grow, as organizations keep adding to the number of mobile devices and tools to their operations. Building a strong culture of security can serve as a moat to any security attacks in the future. 

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