Creating a Culture of Cyber Security

Cyber Security Awareness Month is coming to a close, but that doesn’t mean that the threats go away. In fact, it’s important to keep the same level of attention on cyber security during the other eleven months of the year. First Data, in conjunction with Trustwave, put together an informative infographic that describes some of the challenges small businesses can face with respect to cyber attacks. Once you read through it, you will notice an underlying theme. 

Human fallibility. 

All the statistics relate back to some element of human behavior or a mistake made by an employee. When we talk about creating a culture of cyber security, we’re really discussing the need to bake in a little bit of suspicion and rigor into everything we do. Probably the most sobering stat is 95% of breach investigations tell us that human error plays into the cause of the breach (SOURCE: IBM Security Services 2014 Cyber Security Intelligence Index.) Virtually every security incident can be, at some point, traced back to a human doing something to create the opportunity for a malicious actor. 

Given that humans are clearly the weak point for cyber defense, it’s important to address this by creating a culture of cyber security. James A. “Sandy” Winnefeld Jr., Christopher Kirchhoff, and David M. Upton recently published an article in the Harvard Business Review entitled: "Cybersecurity’s Human Factor: Lessons From The Pentagon.” In it, the authors describe a set of steps that business owners or managers of all sizes can take to beef up your resistance to cyber attacks. 

Take a look at the infographic and pass it around your workforce. Post it somewhere as a reminder for your employees.

Source: First Data