Security awareness.
Security awareness is the understanding that groups are out to hack into your data, steal information and corrupt your files. It’s a strategy used by IT and security personnel to prevent and mitigate this risk for organizations and users alike.
Security awareness uses programs to help users and employees understand their role in combating information security breaches, identifying cyber attacks and any other form of ‘hack’ they encounter, be it on the web, email or another software or interface.
Why would you want security awareness?
Project managers, in particular, should be hyper-sensitive to creating a security awareness culture. This ensures that our employees and stakeholders understand the importance of security and their roles and responsibilities in maintaining a secure cloud environment. If security awareness can be taught, it can mitigate the risk of human error, which often allows attempts to breach data when spam is clicked, or other unintentional software is used.
As software continues to evolve, keeping up with the current trends is vital to ensuring ongoing longevity for a product and the safety of all parties involved.
How does security awareness work?
A basic security awareness protocol will ask the project manager/employee to:
- Identify the key security risks and threats that the organization faces.
- Develop a training and education program to educate employees and stakeholders about these risks and threats and their roles and responsibilities in maintaining a secure cloud environment.
- Provide regular security updates and reminders to keep security top-of-mind.
- Be part of establishing metrics to measure the effectiveness of the security awareness process.
- Be part of regular employee training and education sessions to ensure everyone understands their security roles and responsibilities.
- Understand and undertake phishing simulations to test employees' ability to recognize and respond to phishing attacks.
- Develop security policies and procedures that are easy to understand and follow.
- Establish a security incident reporting process to encourage employees to report security incidents and potential security risks.
- Provide employees with the necessary tools and resources to maintain a secure cloud environment.
Continuously monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the security awareness process, and make improvements as needed.
The value of security awareness
By creating a security awareness process for cloud security, project managers can reduce the risk of human error and improve the organization's overall security posture. This begins a culture of awareness and observation, which reduces the 90% of human error which leads to a security breach. In short, the more keyed-in employees and project managers are, the less likely an organization will make a costly mistake.
Main advantages of security awareness
- Helps promote a culture of security within the organization
- Facilitates better understanding of security risks and threats
- Improves overall security posture of the organization
- Enables better risk management and mitigation
- Enhances compliance with security regulations and standards
- Improves customer trust and loyalty.
A common user story
“As a Product Manager, we want to create a security awareness process for cloud security to ensure that our employees and stakeholders understand the importance of security and their roles and responsibilities in maintaining a secure cloud environment. By identifying key security risks and threats, developing a training and education program, providing regular security updates and reminders, and establishing metrics to measure the effectiveness of the security awareness process, we can reduce the risk of human error and improve the overall security posture of the organization.”
Any questions?
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