How to Achieve Employee Compliance On the Matters of Cybersecurity?

Cybersecurity has become absolutely essential in conducting business that involves any form of technology. It is not only necessary for protecting the customer information but also the general company data. If your company is not protected by the cybersecurity, then your business is exposed to a range of threats that can not only cost you thousands in compromised information but more importantly, the customer trust.

Employees often struggle to adapt to employee monitoring applications or cybersecurity procedures set by the company. Issues may arise when employees want to get their work done before the deadline. They may bypass some of the rules especially if they don’t see any value in them. This means that achieving 100% compliance from your employees in the cybersecurity matters can be challenging at times.

So how can we achieve employee compliance on cybersecurity matters? Below are some ways you can improve employee compliance when it comes to cybersecurity and monitoring procedures.

Create Employee Awareness

Any kind of compliance has to start with the employee awareness first. Best would be to develop a plan to educate and train your staff about the cybersecurity measures you are about to take and how do you plan to implement them. Cybersecurity measures may include the use of employee monitoring apps for compliance. If you achieve that, it will be easier for you to achieve the compliance from the employees. The training methods must go beyond explaining how your plan affects the business. You must educate your staff about the threats that could affect them personally.

Regular Training

Develop regular training programs to educate your employees. One of the best ways to do so would be to conduct semiannual or ongoing training and awareness programs for employees. Explain them overtly about the liabilities and threats that they might face for not complying with the protocols. People are not aware of all the hacking tactics and schemes that are trending, that’s why many of them don’t take the cybersecurity protocols seriously.

Keep It Personal and Relatable

Employees often resist such programs as the list of requirements and procedures mostly seems onerous and burdensome to them. You can start with clear examples and take help of visual aids like video training to make it more interesting. Show them how the non-compliance to the rules can result in a data breach. Educate them on how this breach would hurt the company and impact employees. This would help them to get the things into a better perspective.

Be Transparent

Mobilize the functional arms of the company like HR, legal, and IT and give them ownership. The more transparent you would be in your communication with the employees about the internal security procedures, the more they would trust. Inform them that this is not just about monitoring the productivity or protecting business interests. Ultimately, this is about maintaining the sanctity of the employee-company relationship. This will not only create the trust but also help in protecting corporate assets and ensuring employee privacy.

Use Videos to Convey Your Message

You can employ various interesting tactics to convey your message across the company. One combination could be to use mandatory compliance training on regular basis at least one time a year with monthly “quick tip” emails sent as reminders to employees every month. In both of these channels, use brief and entertaining videos to convey key points for following the cybersecurity procedures.

Relate Training to Their Personal Lives

The best way to achieve cybersecurity compliance from employees is by tying it to their personal lives. You can schedule your programs as “public service announcements” for cyber fraud in one month and then tax fraud in the next month. By educating the employees about the risks that impact their personal lives, you can achieve a significant reduction in malware downloads and phishing compromises.

Keep It Simple and Easy

If you create cumbersome policy procedures that are boring to read and difficult to retain, you will never achieve your goals. So try to keep your rules and policies simple to read, follow, and implement. For example, “If you want to create an account on a third-party site, use a password manager to keep protect your password.”

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