Security awareness training is a formal process for educating employees and third-party stakeholders, like contractors and business partners, on how to protect an organizations computer systems, along with its data, people, and other assets, from internet-based threats or criminals. The training program should be comprehensive, starting with rudimentary lessons and moving up to advanced materials. It should also include an assessment process to help organizations identify a workers level of cybersecurity awareness and subsequently create a learning pathway for them. The key features and benefits of security awareness training include:

• Minimizing risk: Research suggests that human error is involved in more than 90% of security breaches. Security awareness training helps to minimize risk, thus preventing the loss of PII, IP, money, or brand reputation.

• Proper cyber hygiene: Effective security awareness training helps employees understand proper cyber hygiene, the security risks associated with their actions, and how to identify cyber attacks they may encounter via email and the web.

• Ongoing training: Cybersecurity experts agree that cybersecurity awareness training should be ongoing within the enterprise. Ongoing training helps workers build a security mindset, helping them stay diligent, and gives organizations opportunities to educate workers on new policies and procedures and alert them to the new and evolving threats and risks they may face.

Security awareness training is not a one-and-done exercise. Regular security training through multiple media is ideal, especially if the organization has high turnover rates. The training program should be tailored to the organizations culture and the different roles within the organization that face different risks and threats.