Key Points of Effective Social Engineering Training

Key Points of Effective Social Engineering Training: Why is Training Important?

When it comes to training employees, you may encounter many details that you need to pay attention to. In particular, training your employees is key to defending against social engineering attacks. But most companies prefer to spend time on data security, using firewalls, vulnerability scanning and penetration testing rather than training. Most companies that opt ​​for technical protection cannot defend themselves well because they forget that hackers can circumvent such protections in various ways. One of the most frequently used methods by hackers for this purpose is social engineering. So what should this training include when you decide to focus on training? Here are the key points of effective social engineering training.

Key Points of Effective Social Engineering Training: How Should the Training Be?

Social engineering training should focus specifically on teaching employees how to recognize and combat data breaches and phishing attacks. Because hackers present themselves as someone who works for a company in social engineering attacks. That way, they can break into a corporate network very quickly and steal important data.

Since hackers target employees in social engineering attacks, employee training is the best defence against these attacks. We have compiled a few key points that will ensure that the training goes smoothly.

Key Points of Effective Social Engineering Training

1. Change your training style and use innovative methods

In classic social engineering training, companies only hold a small meeting once a year or when hiring the first time. These types of sessions often take too long and are uninteresting to employees. Therefore, the information learned in education is not effective or permanent. In this way, you can organize regular training at least once every three months instead of yearly and long-term training. In training, focus specifically on examples of social engineering attacks and how employees can protect themselves. Keep your employees constantly fit with regular training. Increase employee engagement by making training especially interactive. This type of training will help employees to remember and apply what they have learned in daily life.

2. Identify the specific issues that concern your company and your policy regarding them.

The biggest challenge for companies with social engineering is training employees on what to do with questionable stuff. To resolve this issue, you must first explore the specific issues that concern your company. You can then define your policy regarding these issues and share the appropriate protocol with your employees. When you create a built-in policy this way, your employees can more easily detect suspicious activity. Your company policy may include:

• Request authentication from anyone trying to access unauthorized areas.
• Do not use USB devices that are not owned by your company or by you.
• If your employee ID is stolen, report it within 12 hours.
• Alert your administrators about social engineering situations.

3. Advise your employees to be cautious about social engineering attacks.

Suspicion is the most important weapon in fighting phishing and social engineering attacks. A cautious employee can protect you from any attack. You should ensure that your employees question suspicious situations and take no action unless they feel safe. In addition, you should make them feel that they should not hesitate to report suspicious behaviour. Your employees should question the activities taking place in the company and should not feel guilty while doing this.

4. Build a cybersecurity culture in your company.

The main reason employees make mistakes is because they get too immersed in their day-to-day work. Try to create cybersecurity awareness and culture in your company from scratch and apply this structure in every department of the company. Training supported in this way ensure that your employees remember important safety information even as they go about their day-to-day work. That’s why it’s so important to make social engineering training a part of employee daily life. For this, you can send regular e-mails to your employees and prepare weekly newsletters. In this way, they learn what to do in case of an attack.

5. Measure the socıal engineering awareness level of your employees.

As long as the information we have learned is not repeated, it does not stay in the permanent memory. The same goes for your employees. In other words, your employees learn best by applying what they learn. Therefore, you should frequently organize tests to measure the level of cybersecurity awareness of your employees. The easiest way to do this is with phishing simulations. Our Phishing Simulator monitors all employee activity, in-depth analysis of performance over time. It helps improve the cybersecurity awareness of employees in all companies, regardless of industry, and provides insight into trends. In this way, you also understand what needs to be improved in your company.