Best Security Awareness Training Software

The main purpose of security awareness training is to train employees to identify, report, and block malicious attempts that compromise the security of their organization. An effective security awareness training program helps minimize the risk of monetary, brand reputation, and legal damage by addressing and preventing the cybersecurity mistakes that employees tend to make when using email, browsing the web, or with careless document disposal.

Security awareness training is important for many reasons. Below are several key benefits of security awareness training.

• Data breach and attack prevention: Security awareness training helps employees to learn about the causes of data breaches and the costly damages they result in. Most data breaches can be prevented with the right knowledge. Proper awareness can also help employees to detect breaches early on, which greatly lessens the severity of cyber-attacks.
  
• Compliance: Data breaches can have a harmful impact on businesses from both a reputational and financial standpoint. Businesses must adhere to an ever-growing number of regulations. For businesses that handle personal, sensitive, or classified information, regulatory compliance violations are mandatory. Implementing a security training program will guarantee employees are aware of compliance policies and can understand how to handle sensitive data and information, providing additional security to businesses.
  
• Technological defenses education: Technological defenses are a valuable weapon in preventing breaches. Security awareness training provides employees with information on firewalls, security warnings, software updates, and patches.
  
• Customer protection: Security awareness training directly benefits consumers, suppliers, and everyone else interlinked within an organization’s network.
  Consumers are increasingly aware of cyberthreats, and as customers, they want to feel protected and secure. A company with security awareness will have a better reputation with consumers. A business that is repeatedly subject to security breaches will lose customers because of negative publicity.
  
• Creating a motivated environment: Engaging security awareness training promotes constant vigilance and learning that ensures cyber security remains a relevant and constant topic throughout the entire organization.
  
• Prevent downtime and increase productivity: Once a data breach occurs, it takes a significant amount of time to investigate and repair damages. This downtime causes severe disruption to workflows and deadlines. Empowering employees with training on phishing, malware attacks, regulatory compliance, password, and cybersecurity best practices strengthens the business, making it more resilient and productive.

Key topics that should be included in security awareness training include:

• Phishing: Security awareness training should cover how to detect and report phishing attempts and give examples of phishing attempts that have affected other companies. Training should also include the dangers of interacting with suspicious links or entering personal information on dubious web pages and accepting contacts from suspicious social media accounts.
  
• Physical security: Security awareness training should establish among employees the importance of awareness of physical security risks, such as unlocked rooms, unauthorized visitors, or sensitive data that is left exposed.
  
• Desktop security: Employees should be instructed to lock or shut off computers at appropriate times and cautioned against plugging unauthorized devices into their computers.
  
• Wireless networks: Security awareness training should outline the risks of connecting to unfamiliar wireless networks.
  
• Password security: Employees need to be instructed on setting up complex passwords and understand the risks involved in reusing passwords, using easy-to-guess passwords, using passwords for a long period of time, and failing to change default passwords immediately.
  
• Malware: Companies should define the different types of malware and the damage they can cause. Employees need to be educated on how to spot malware and what actions to take if they suspect their device has been infected.

Security awareness training software allows administrators to create training tutorials with interactive quizzes and knowledge assessments.

In addition, security awareness training software allows administrators to create and schedule simulated attacks on groups of employees or individual employees and monitor their responses to the attacks.

Many awareness training platforms offer IT teams data and analytics that show which users within an organization are at most risk of causing a data breach and provide the tools for administrators to help the users that need it most.

Effective training platforms can help companies monitor and develop a culture of security and help identify areas for improvement. In addition to training users on security awareness best practices, security awareness training platforms provide analytics that help design training plans for individual users, helping them receive the support and knowledge they need.

Security awareness training software will provide tools to help businesses create engaging, hands-on virtual training and demo environments to educate employees about different cyberattacks such as phishing, ransomware, and more.

Security awareness training software will generally have the following features:

• Flexible, up-to-date security awareness content creation tools.
• Ability to create security awareness tests.
• Role-based relevant training creation for individuals or groups.
• Phishing attack simulators.
• Analytic tools to view test results and simulated phishing attack responses.