A report by Gartner provides insight on the human factor in cybersecurity: by 2025 a) Nearly half of cybersecurity leaders will change jobs, 25% for different roles entirely due to stress, and b) Lack of talent or human failure will be responsible for over half of significant cyber incidents.
Being a cybersecurity practitioner is undoubtedly stressful due to the hundreds of thousands of new cyberthreats that are created every day; a cyber defender has to be effective against every single attack, but it takes just one successful attack to disrupt operations. This stress is compounded by cybersecurity being added as a layer on top of operations rather than baked into operations, as the cybersecurity team is made responsible for security outcomes that result from the actions and decisions of many others. Cybersecurity as a separate layer is not a sustainable way to ensure long-term safety as Gartner’s report also reveals that lack of talent and human failure will contribute to a significant portion of cyberattacks. Businesses must resolve both these issues, and the solution to both lies in cybersecurity training.
Why Is Cybersecurity Training The Solution?
The common thread that links both the statistics quoted at the beginning is the lack of sufficient cybersecurity talent. Cybersecurity talent can manifest both as a) cybersecurity specialists with in-depth expertise in defending against cyberattacks, and b) cybersecurity awareness amongst business users.
Cybersecurity Specialists
Creating a strong team of cybersecurity specialists will reduce stress on cybersecurity leaders who will be able to focus on long-term strategic cybersecurity initiatives rather than managing routine cybersecurity tasks. The obvious solution here is to hire a team of specialists with the required expertise, but the cybersecurity industry is experiencing a severe talent deficit that is unlikely to end soon and enterprises struggle to identify, recruit, and retain the necessary talent. Cybersecurity training that is designed to develop advanced threat hunting and attack prevention skills enables the enterprise to create a cybersecurity team from the existing, in-house IT team. This is often quicker than attempting to recruit specialists, develops the specific cybersecurity skills that are required by the enterprise, and creates greater employee commitment as they benefit from skill enhancement and superior career progression.
Business Users
Business users, the non-IT employees of the organisation, are responsible for most utilisation of computing resources and the design and execution of business processes. Cybersecurity training that emphasises the fundamentals of cyber hygiene can help employees flag suspicious events and behaviour and facilitate creating business processes that integrate cybersecurity at the design stage to reduce opportunities for threat actors to compromise the enterprise. Phishing attacks that target the user are responsible for 91% of cyberattacks and cybersecurity training for business users can help in defending against such attacks that rely on social engineering rather than attacking a device or network.
Cybersecurity Training from K7 Academy
K7 Academy is a unit of K7 Computing, a global leader in cybersecurity with over 30 years’ expertise in the industry. The academy draws on K7 Computing’s experience and insight, gained from protecting 25+ million users across 27 countries and operating K7 Labs which analyses hundreds of thousands of threat samples every day, to design training programmes that quickly create the expertise required to defend against real-world enterprise cyberattacks. Our training programmes can be customised to meet the needs of specific enterprise audiences, such as C-suite training to create awareness and build defences against whaling and similar attacks that target senior management, prevent brand erosion, and aid in the development of effective cybersecurity strategies.
Corporate Cybersecurity Training
K7 Academy’s training for the corporate sector includes
- Certified Malware Researcher – Windows
- Develops skills and techniques to perform forensic investigation of malware and secure the Windows environment
- Includes case studies, discussions on current threats and past attacks, and industry perspectives
- Certified Malware Researcher – Android
- Creates proficiency in analysing mobile threats
- Includes demonstrations and activities on Android app development, and case studies and discussions on the current Android threat landscape
- Network Security
- Enables management of complex networks through understanding of network fundamentals and security layers
- Includes demonstrations and activities on network protocols, layer-wise attacks, network monitoring tools, log and packet capture and parsing, as well as case studies and discussions
- Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing
- Provides hands-on learning of the steps taken by an ethical hacker to pentest a website
- Includes demonstration and activities on footprinting, scanning, enumeration, and hacking a WordPress website, as well as case studies and discussions
- Cybersecurity Sentinel
- Creates awareness of key cybersecurity concepts, cyber ethics, laws, and standards
- Includes case studies, discussions on current threats and past attacks, and industry perspectives
- Security Incident Response
- Develops skills to respond to attacks and isolate malware
- Includes malware testing in secure environments, incident response plan and practice, as well as case studies and discussions
How Cybersecurity Training Benefits Enterprises
K7 Academy’s cybersecurity training provides various benefits appropriate to the stakeholder segment:
- Business Users – Improvement in cybersecurity awareness across the organisation
- IT Team – Cybersecurity skill development and tool familiarity
- C-suite – Knowledge download to enable the development of strategic cybersecurity initiatives
Contact Us to learn more about our training programmes and how we can help you prevent destructive cyberattacks in your organisation through a strategy or relevant and proactive cybersecurity training.