Cyber security awareness training proposal

Communication Security Plan

In every organization small or large there is need to create a value of its data and one way to this is through ensuring that the workforce understands and knows what kind of threats can be encountered. It also includes the measures which can be undertaken to protect against them. However several organizations have encountered high-ends of data breaching hence left with millions of credentials stolen. Due to this issue, most organizations invest heavily towards implementing cybersecurity laws and education programs for training employees in understanding how to protect their personal information and organization computers. They also train them on the indicators to make them aware of the most cyber-criminals and hacking activities which occur during Web search and their vulnerabilities. Therefore, the key aspect which each and every organization should take is to plan on creating security awareness to their employees.

Security awareness training is quite important as it creates and develops essential competencies, new methods, and techniques to the employees which are essential in facing security issue possible in the organization. An organization which has communication security plans have great advantages as they can provide employees with some levels of maturity thus helping them respond positively and protect the corporate resources adequately (Bejtlich, 2012). This is achieved through the adoption of the Security Awareness Training Program within the organization.

For organizations to implement achieve good communication security plan it has to consider some various factors. These factors are entailed to enhance the organizations achieve the desired results of security programs in as well as enhance organization’s success. Therefore, in order to implement favorable messaging strategies in order to gain senior management’s buy-in and support the security programs the following factors should be considered. They include; the targeted audience. This means that the communication plan will attain effective advantages to targeted audiences in that if it is millennials theirs will be different from baby boomers. Therefore the organizations should try various communication plans in order to see which one fits or resonates best with the different audiences (Ponemon, 2015). This includes announcements during staff meetings, newsletters, blogs, reminder within break rooms or cafeterias, podcasts, vlogs, private messaging and screensavers which displays data securities or even games which can help in disseminating the messages. In other words, also the IT team can decide to divide employees according to their support in company procedures, best practices, and policies as well as those who might be barriers to the organization's success.

The communication security plan can also be made personal and relatable. Most employees may seem not to care about a company’s security; therefore, organization managers are encouraged to offer educational training to them. These training programs can be focused to encourage them to understand the importance of them taking part in organization security control. These training programs can be offered during the first few weeks after hiring new employees. Therefore, in order to make sure that the organization policies and procedures will adhere to the best practice, they can follow up a training of up to six months which are scheduled to create an ongoing educational programming data security (Ponemon, 2015).

Other important factors to consider in implementing accurate communication security plan include equipping employees with a data security toolkit. According to (Ponemon, 2015), “organization is supposed to account for both low tech and high-tech data security equipping to the company issued devices which have data security toolkits.” In order for the devices to be effective, the organization should take an inventory of where and how they are being used by rolling out security tools within risk-based approaches. The other factor is encouraging employees to have a cultural change. For the training programs to be of advantage to the company employees will be able to get a grasp of risks of leaving confidential information carelessly. Therefore, the IT security teams in any organization are encouraged to develop self-policing organizational culture, in which all the workers buy into as well as understand the importance of data security for the organization overall growth and health.

A communication security plan implemented through messaging strategies and offering security awareness is important as it helps reduce security breaches within the organization. An employee is able to grasp all the information through messages as they are automatically set for the IT department to remind them regularly. Therefore, these awareness programs are advantageous as follows; they help workers be able to understand and react appropriately to securities issues, enables the employees to become aware of the information within the organization systems, it provides savings through the security awareness, training activities, coordination and educational programs thus reducing the duplicating efforts. Awareness programs also provide information on means to avoid phishing, IT theft and frauds. Lastly, it also builds organization culture in information and security competences.