By Brady Hicks When it comes to cybersecurity, today’s organizations are only as strong as their least-knowledgeable employees. Internet-based attacks go down every day, destroying critical business assets with surgical precision. They strike broadly, targeting all employees to capitalize on the bad habits of the most vulnerable. While offering access to new security technology and services can help, those tools have their limits. According to Verizon, about 80 percent of modern data breaches involve some sort of “human element.” Compounding this issue is the persistent work-from-home movement in which geographically remote staff go largely unsupervised every day. Fortinet recently reported that 60 percent of businesses allow staffers to log in and work remotely. Of those, 62 percent observed a direct attack. It all adds up to a significantly widened strike surface, replete with more vulnerabilities and points of entry than ever before. At each location, a singular staff member wields incredible power over network and information access, often with limited understanding of the daily threats that they face. In turn, IT and security decision makers don’t show much confidence in employees helping them shut down attacks. Even when it comes to arguably the most invested employees, there isn’t much faith in their ability to protect personal hardware, systems and networks. When Ponemon Institute, in a survey sponsored by privacy protection company BlackCloak, asked IT and IT security practitioners to rate how confident they were in CEOs and executives’ abilities to prevent attacks on their personal hardware, systems and networks, only 26 percent of respondents were confident. A similar 28 percent were confident in high-level executives’ abilities to recognize a phishing email. CISOs prioritizing employee security training CYBER PATROL CYBER SCHOOLING 24 CHANNELVISION | JULY - AUGUST 2023
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