Cyber-Aware Culture: Creating a Human Firewall

Ensuring resilient protection against the latest cyber threats is a business imperative for organisations of every size. The frequency and ferocity of cyber attacks is growing, with the UK Government's 2024 cyber security breaches survey showing that a staggering 50% of businesses and 32% of charities experienced some form of cyber security breach or attack in the last year. 
 
But protecting your business against new threats doesn't just lay at the door of the IT and cyber security team. It's a responsibility that falls on every member of your business. This serves to emphasise the crucial role of a well-cultivated cyber-aware culture in protecting your organisation from evolving digital threats.

 
Making your Employees the First Line of Defence

Deploying the right technology undoubtedly plays a crucial role in defining the effectiveness of your cyber posture, but this cannot work alone. In fact, it is often your users who determine the success or failure of your strategy.  

From entry-level staff to long-standing executives, every member of your team has a vital role in maintaining a robust security posture. Ensuring these employees are mindful of this responsibility is the essence of a cyber-aware culture. This is the collective knowledge, beliefs, values, and behaviours that determine how your team approaches security in their day-to-day work. 

By fostering a culture where every individual understands and embraces their role in ensuring the effective protection of your organisation and its valuable data, you can significantly enhance resilience and reduce risk.

 
Laying Cultural Foundations

 
Creating a robust cyber-aware culture isn't some compliance box ticking exercise. It's about driving a genuine shift in how your organisation and its employees think about cyber security.  

To start building a more cyber-aware culture, it’s important to reflect on the current state of play across your business. There are some important considerations to make which help assess your position today, and what can be evolved to reach the desired outcome tomorrow. 

Firstly, consider the current practices in place across your business. How well established are they and how well have they been communicated with your team? Have they been written down and made accessible for employees to sanity check and update? Building an ivory tower around cyber security only undermines cyber awareness in the long term, so it’s critical to make sure everyone has a seat at the table. 

It’s also important to understand how your team feels about the security protocols that are in place, and how well these are applied in their day-to-day role. Make sure employees don’t feel afraid to report when rules aren’t being followed, or where shadow IT is being used which circumvents existing procedures. 

Finally, you should also consider the knowledge and capabilities of your team. Do they have sufficient skills and insights to identify potential risks, and are they aware of the processes that need to be followed in the event of an attack or breach? If not, then cyber awareness training should be your number one priority. 

Only by considering the above can you start to build a true picture of your current cyber awareness and preparedness, and outline next steps to guide positive progress towards establishing a properly defined culture.

How to Create a Cyber-Aware Culture

By fostering a culture of security awareness, you can significantly reduce your vulnerability to cyber threats and create a more resilient organisation.  

There are lots of different strategies to consider, but adopting some of these key approaches is a fundamental step: 

1. Deliver tailored user awareness training: Providing your team with access to regular and, more importantly, engaging user awareness training will help build their knowledge and skills, developing a level of confidence over hot to identify and respond to day-to-day risks.

2. Conduct regular cyber risk assessments: Ensure that you are regularly evaluating your security posture to identify any unseen vulnerabilities across your IT estate. This should also include regular tests of user awareness and cyber readiness to identify team members who present the biggest risk. Doing so will not only help to reveal any areas for improvement or further education, but will also help you assess the relative strength of your posture and progress to date.
   
3. Set high standards: Any strong cyber-aware culture should be underpinned by strict compliance standards, and these are often driven by industry certifications. This needs to be seen as more than a box-ticking exercise, and something that is an ongoing pursuit of excellence, such as the achievement of Cyber Essentials Plus rather than Cyber Essentials, which brings in an additional level of visibilities in terms of auditing of your IT estate. 

Embedding Cyber Awareness Across your Business

Any cultural changes across a business take time to implement, and this applies to the embedding of cyber security behaviours and practices. 

Leadership plays a crucial role. When C-suite executives champion cyber security initiatives, it sets the tone for the entire organisation. Clear, consistent communication is also key to ensuring that everyone understands their role in maintaining security. 
 
Importantly, you should always keep in mind that a good security culture isn't about pointing fingers or attributing blame when mistakes happen. It's about creating an environment where team members feel comfortable reporting concerns, or even flagging inadvertent indiscretions without fear of reprisal. Getting employees onside and encouraging them to share information at the earliest point can be the difference between a minor incident and a major breach, which will ultimately help to reduce the level of risk or the impacts on the business. 

Start Creating the Cyber Culture you Want

By empowering every team member with the skills, knowledge and desire to respond effectively to emerging cyber threats, you can create a human firewall that ensures new level of cyber resilience. 

At FluidOne, we’ve seen firsthand how effective a cyber-aware culture can be when implemented correctly, but cultivating this is an ongoing and evolving process.

Ready to get started? Contact us today to learn how we can help you build a cyber-aware culture, or take the first step with a free trial of KnowBe4 user awareness training.