You might be surprised to learn that many IT professionals tend to be more concerned about internal security threats to a business than external ones. Why is this?

Employees are typically the weakest link between your security measures and security breaches. Employees can accidentally install malware, compromise company data, abuse computer privileges, or even steal information unknowingly.

Security breaches are much more common than many businesses realize, which is why end user security awareness training is so important. With internal threats becoming more prevalent than external ones, conducting these trainings for your staff might just save your business!

End User Training Is an Important Investment

End user security awareness training is absolutely an investment. Unfortunately, the need for these trainings isn’t always accounted for in the security budgets of companies, as many businesses are too focused on external threats.

The reality is that end user security awareness training can make your employees more competent and aware of the role they play in keeping your company secure, therefore better protecting your systems.

IT security is an ever-changing field. How are your employees supposed to keep up with changes to company policy, system updates, and new threats? Security training for your team can help.

From helping your employees recognize threats to training them to properly handle security incidents, many cyber attacks can be circumvented simply by raising employee awareness of how they affect your company’s security.

Decrease Frequency and Intensity of Threats

Without end user security awareness training and prevention solutions, internal threats will increase. IT security is more dependent on your system’s users than many companies realize. These end users should be able to recognize attacks, avoid threats, and report incidents as quickly as possible.

Your team may not be trained in security, leading to a lack of awareness of cybersecurity threats as well as how to handle them. Many employees use systems that are unmonitored or may even have access to systems they have no need for.

End user security awareness training is absolutely relevant for people who affect your workplace daily. With businesses becoming more dependent on technology and IT solutions, these trainings are a must for both management and employees.

The future success of your company may just depend on your employees having the necessary skills to know what a security threat might look like and simply reporting this threat to your in-house or outsourced IT team. The right training can make this process much simpler and more effective for your entire team.

Augment Company Security

Remember that no IT security solution is completely effective against threats. Cybersecurity threats and attacks are evolving daily. The people behind these attacks often realize that your employees are an element of your business you can’t predict and have little control over when it comes to end user security.

Employees don’t want to sabotage your company—they often just aren’t aware of security best practices, how they create vulnerabilities in the system, and even unknowingly install viruses on your system. End user security awareness training can help.

These trainings can also keep company policy in addition to IT security fresh in their minds. Making employees aware that security is everyone’s job is essential, so consider conducting a new end user security awareness training whenever company policy is changed or updated.

Are you aware of how your employees and even management are affecting the security of your daily business operations? To prevent threats and create a more comprehensive security solution for your entire organization, consider conducting end user security awareness training. These trainings can greatly improve your business’ security solutions through your most important asset—your employees!

You’ve gotten your business’ security needs addressed—from your network architecture to company mobile devices, you feel protected against attacks.

But what about the huge gap between your advanced security system and your end users? Do your employees understand the basics of cyberattacks as well as how to prevent them—and if not—report them?

With internal threats nearly outpacing external ones, IT security training in Northern Virginia has become crucial for businesses both large and small. Here’s why IT security training is absolutely essential for your team—both management and staff—to better protect your business.

Work to Prevent Cyberattacks

Having a team that has some basic knowledge of how cyberattacks work as well as the role they play in preventing these attacks is the goal of IT security training in Northern Virginia. A team that’s trained on IT security can fill the gaps in your security protocol and help prevent attacks.

Cyberattacks are not only detrimental to both a business and its customers, they’re also costly. The average security breach for a small business costs $38,000 per attack. For large businesses, the number is even higher at over $800,000. Can your business afford to keep exposing itself to cyberattacks?

You don’t have to keep your company at risk. Through IT security training in Northern Virginia, you and your staff can become more educated about IT security and learn best practices to significantly reduce your risk of a breach.

Enhance Team Skills

Preventing cyberattacks is a team effort. Developing team skills through IT security training in Northern Virginia can not only keep your team updated on new security issues and company policies, but can also strengthen your workforce.

A good security program includes every staff member, not just management. Everyone has a role to play when it comes to handling cyberattacks or threats. All employees should be equally invested in your company’s security, and trainings are an excellent place for people to learn together.

Your personnel can respond seriously to attacks or even just suspected threats, be aware of how to manage these incidents and, more importantly, how to avoid them.

Through enhancing your team’s IT security awareness and skills, you improve your security without even touching your infrastructure. From secure remote working to physical security and email and password security, these trainings are essential.

Retain Customer Trust

IT security training in Northern Virginia teaches some of the most basic skills that every organization needs. After all, there’s no question that your company will experience a security breach—the only uncertainty is when and on what level it will happen.

Good security is about more than protecting your business. It involves safeguarding customer data and showing that your company genuinely cares about the impact your business practices have on the security of sensitive customer information.

IT security training in Northern Virginia teaches your employees skills that help prevent breaches and better secure customer information and company data, therefore protecting your customer’s trust and loyalty.

Small and medium-sized businesses are just as much at risk as large corporations for cyberattacks, as small businesses usually lack professional security solutions. Is your business prepared to lose customer trust and its integrity by neglecting a fundamental part of its IT security such as employees?

Get Secure Today

Your business can gain a more comprehensive solution to security through IT security training in Northern Virginia. Whether you’re a small business or an enterprise-level one, security is a paramount concern and affects your business both today and in the future. When you’re ready to enhance your team’s skills, improve security, and maintain your customer’s trust, consider IT security training!

 Establishing IT compliance doesn’t just safeguard customer data—it keeps your data safe as well. When it comes to decreasing your compliance risks, keeping in line with regulations both within your industry as well as your state is crucial.

Although not meeting compliance regulations has some heavy consequences, it’s constantly becoming more of a challenge to keep up with IT regulations. How can you reduce your compliance risks to keep the trust of your customers and avoid penalties and fines?

Here, we help you better manage your security threats with some simple changes any business has the ability to make.

Train Your Employees

Although your fear of security threats might be focused outside of your company, the reality is that your employees actually end up being the biggest risk to your business.

This is because not all employees are as well-versed in security best practices as your security team, yet they have access to sensitive information as well as sites on the web, including phishing emails. How can you stop these compliance risks from threatening your security?

By training your employees, you can help protect sensitive data. Schedule trainings to teach your employees about how to recognize security threats, how they can better protect your system, and what they should do if they feel an attack has been launched.

This simple, cost-effective method can help reduce your compliance risks and stop employees from engaging in harmful security habits.

Consider Mobile Device Security

 More employees are on their personal phones now than ever before. This makes it imperative that your business has a protocol in place to stop unauthorized access to sensitive data on an employee’s mobile device.

Whether their mobile phone or tablet is the property of your company or not, standards need to be in place to protect your data. To reduce compliance risks, you can invest in data encryption, minimize or eliminate the ability to store data on devices that don’t have the proper security, and allow IT to remotely access devices to wipe data in the event that a device has been misplaced or stolen.

Third-party apps also increase compliance risks. Employees may be using these apps to transfer data or share it with other employees, when these apps aren’t compliant with your security measures. You can help configure mobiles so that only authorized apps that are in compliance can be downloaded.

When it comes to mobile security, consider what standards need to be in place to minimize the chances that a hacker would gain access to data as a result of careless mobile security measures.

Invest in Cloud Solutions

 Migrating to the cloud under a trusted provider can allow you to better meet IT compliance needs and reduce compliance risks.

Cloud providers have the flexibility to adapt to compliance regulations as they change and even better fit your budget requirements. Cloud solutions are highly customizable and can ensure that your data is secure regardless of what IT compliance standards you need to meet.

While it might seem risky to move your files to an outside data center, the opposite is true—these centers are some of the most secure places you could imagine. The professionals behind cloud solutions can help you meet all necessary requirements and reduce compliance risks without the headache.

Achieving IT compliance and reducing security risks is easy when you know the areas that you need to focus on for your company. Remember that employees pose the biggest threat to your security. Keep mobile devices in mind when considering company security on all technology, and if you haven’t already, consider cloud solutions to mitigate risk!

You might be surprised to learn that many IT professionals tend to be more concerned about internal security threats to a business than external ones. Why is this?

Employees are typically the weakest link between your security measures and security breaches. Employees can accidentally install malware, compromise company data, abuse computer privileges, or even steal information unknowingly.

Security breaches are much more common than many businesses realize, which is why end user security awareness training is so important. With internal threats becoming more prevalent than external ones, conducting these trainings for your staff might just save your business!

End User Training Is an Important Investment

End user security awareness training is absolutely an investment. Unfortunately, the need for these trainings isn’t always accounted for in the security budgets of companies, as many businesses are too focused on external threats.

The reality is that end user security awareness training can make your employees more competent and aware of the role they play in keeping your company secure, therefore better protecting your systems.

IT security is an ever-changing field. How are your employees supposed to keep up with changes to company policy, system updates, and new threats? Security training for your team can help.

From helping your employees recognize threats to training them to properly handle security incidents, many cyber attacks can be circumvented simply by raising employee awareness of how they affect your company’s security.

Decrease Frequency and Intensity of Threats

Without end user security awareness training and prevention solutions, internal threats will increase. IT security is more dependent on your system’s users than many companies realize. These end users should be able to recognize attacks, avoid threats, and report incidents as quickly as possible.

Your team may not be trained in security, leading to a lack of awareness of cybersecurity threats as well as how to handle them. Many employees use systems that are unmonitored or may even have access to systems they have no need for.

End user security awareness training is absolutely relevant for people who affect your workplace daily. With businesses becoming more dependent on technology and IT solutions, these trainings are a must for both management and employees.

The future success of your company may just depend on your employees having the necessary skills to know what a security threat might look like and simply reporting this threat to your in-house or outsourced IT team. The right training can make this process much simpler and more effective for your entire team.

Augment Company Security

Remember that no IT security solution is completely effective against threats. Cybersecurity threats and attacks are evolving daily. The people behind these attacks often realize that your employees are an element of your business you can’t predict and have little control over when it comes to end user security.

Employees don’t want to sabotage your company—they often just aren’t aware of security best practices, how they create vulnerabilities in the system, and even unknowingly install viruses on your system. End user security awareness training can help.

These trainings can also keep company policy in addition to IT security fresh in their minds. Making employees aware that security is everyone’s job is essential, so consider conducting a new end user security awareness training whenever company policy is changed or updated.

Are you aware of how your employees and even management are affecting the security of your daily business operations? To prevent threats and create a more comprehensive security solution for your entire organization, consider conducting end user security awareness training. These trainings can greatly improve your business’ security solutions through your most important asset—your employees!

With the upcoming DoD deadline to incorporate the new cybersecurity regulation items into your nonfederal information system, government contractors are attempting to meet these requirements before December 31, 2017.

Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS) 252.204-7012 stipulates that nonfederal organizations put measures in place to protect classified defense information (CDI). These measures are outlined in the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Special Publication (SP) 800-171, Revision 1.

Are you ready for the upcoming deadline? Here are six things you should know about the new cybersecurity regulation.

 For Accurate and Timely Results, Work with Professionals

This is especially true if you’re in a time crunch. As a contractor, you can evaluate and select a professional IT company to provide you with high quality services to meet this cybersecurity regulation. These professionals can measure your cybersecurity risks and work with you to implement all 110 controls of NIST SP 800-171.

Working with a professional IT provider will help you get the ball rolling much faster—not to mention more accurately—than if you were to try and meet the requirements by yourself. To get your company in gear, find an IT provider that can help.

If You Fail to Comply, Expect Consequences

Although currently the government lacks resources to audit your compliance, they may ask to see your documented security plan. If your security plan is found to be in non-compliance with cybersecurity regulation, your organization may face consequences.

These penalties include having up to 20% of your pay withheld, your work suspended, or termination of your contract. You can avoid these consequences by ensuring compliance is met before the December 31, 2017 deadline.

The Cost of Compliance

Currently, specific guidelines are lacking for how these compliance expenses will be handled. For some companies, meeting the cybersecurity regulation will only require a few tweaks in their system. For others, a complete overhaul may be needed.

These business expenses related to compliance may be considered indirect costs; therefore, they may be allowable expenses under your contract if considered fair and reasonable. Regardless of the cost of compliance, you’ll still be expected to meet the requirements in order to continue your work for the government.

Cybersecurity Liability Insurance Isn’t Required

DFARS isn’t requiring contractors to purchase cybersecurity liability insurance. If you choose to purchase this insurance, the cost may or may not be allowable under your contract, depending on whether or not it’s necessary and sufficient.

Keep in mind that even if you experience a breach and your cybersecurity insurance denies to cover the costs, there’s no guarantee that it would be an allowed expense relating to your contract for this cybersecurity regulation. Your company needs to decide whether cybersecurity liability insurance would be worth it for your contract.

Liability Concerning Government Contractors

It’s important to keep in mind that primary contractors of the DoD are responsible for the performance of their subcontractors; this includes subcontractors’ ability to comply with NIST SP 800-171. Primary contractors don’t always communicate things such as cybersecurity regulation to their subcontractors, but you may be liable if your subcontractors aren’t meeting the regulations.

You can avoid penalties and help lessen your liability by communicating the NIST SP 800-171 requirements to your subcontractors before the deadline to give them a chance to meet the regulation before it’s too late.

Contractors and Limited Cybersecurity Staffing

Cybersecurity professionals tend to be limited in the world today, where daily threats are commonplace. While it’s a challenge to keep staff on hand to help with your cybersecurity regulation needs, you are responsible for this task as a government contractor.

You can create a balance of employees, tools, and resources to meet your cybersecurity needs. Know that the DoD won’t make an exception just because you may be having trouble finding an appropriate provider, so be sure to secure cybersecurity staff as soon as possible.

Are you ready for the new cybersecurity regulation? You can analyze the scope of your CDI to determine what needs to happen before the deadline. Working with a provider can accelerate the process, and remember that non-compliance won’t come without consequences. You can achieve compliancy before the deadline to uphold your contracts!