How Enterprises Can Improve Security Awareness Through Culture

As life-changing advancements in technology create drastic changes across enterprise environments, new technology has brought about new and innovative ways of getting work done, anywhere, and at anytime!

Initially, the advent of mobile phones and tablets provided users with great versatility and mobility in accomplishing their work-related tasks.

However, with significant recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) and other information capturing and analysis technologies, today, the modern workplace is equipped with tools to drive productivity to levels that have never been achieved prior!

There is a catch though…

With increasing technological integration and dependence in the workplace, security concerns have also risen dramatically!

Enterprises using these latest technologies often do so to gather data and produce intelligent information, and while this is important for achieving business goals, the security aspect of this cannot be undermined!

Organizations must ensure that their information gathering, analysis, and storage processes are completely secure, and are fortified from the risk of any potential breaches that could occur.

The importance of security cannot be ignored, especially in today’s corporate world, with giants like Facebook currently in the midst of huge market value losses, due largely to issues and concerns raised around their handling of user data and data security!

With that being said, its equally important for companies to ensure that possible internal security risks are also mitigated.

With a large portion of security breaches occurring from within a company’s boundaries, lets take a look at how enterprises can improve security measures from within, and create a security-aware workforce.

Internal Security Risks: Cause for Concern

Although most data-security related news is often highlighted by high-calibre hackers and criminals, corporate breaches, for the most part, are caused intentionally or unintentionally by internal employees!

Many such breaches are caused by employees mindlessly visiting websites with suspicious content or clicking on links from emails that are embedded with harmful viruses.

Although these concerns may seem trivial, with the possibility of breaching the private data of thousands of users, these viruses and breaches have the potential to spiral into a huge mess, causing nightmares for everyone from the executives down to the IT security administrators.

By developing workforce awareness of these risks and their potential negative outcomes, enterprises can avoid internal breaches altogether, saving them the resources and time of dealing with greater security issues.

Check out this free webinar on why now is the time to secure your printing infrastructure!

Current State of Affairs: Lack of Concern Surrounding Security

Recent studies focused on gauging employee awareness surrounding corporate security show disturbing results.

A recent study of various enterprise employees, done by Citrix Canada, indicated that forty percent of the subjects felt absolutely no accountability as to whether corporate data was sufficiently secured.

Additionally, the study reported that every three out of ten corporate employees had no clue as to what exactly their employer’s data security measures comprised of.

Engraining Security into Workforce Culture

While enterprise security often boils down the technological substructures that are in place to protect sensitive data and confidential information, as you can probably see from the points raised throughout this blog, creating a security-first approach amongst employees and creating security aware culture in the workplace can go a long way in preventing subsequent catastrophes from occurring.

Both the technological aspects and human aspects of security need to be addressed, with technical teams ensuring that a secure infrastructure is in place, while leadership and executives focus on addressing the clear discrepancy relating to the degree of priority that security is given amongst their team members and employees.

What’s Next: Implementing End-to-End, All-Around Security

Technical leadership should focus on building a robust IT department, with highly talented security professionals who build and implement security policies that keep the enterprise infrastructure protected from all possible breaches.

Human resources leadership and other executives should ensure that they incorporate sufficient security awareness training and activities during the hiring process to ensure new employees are well-versed in the company’s security protocols and guidelines.

Additionally, since security requirements are constantly changing with dynamic technology updates, existing employees should be provided with ongoing education surrounding the latest security concerns and protocols being adopted.

By doing so, enterprises can support their secure technical infrastructure with an intelligence-driven, security-focused workforce!

Check out this free webinar on why now is the time to secure your printing infrastructure!