As part of the expansion of your business, you have hired several new employees and are welcoming them into your organisation. In your preparations and onboarding plan, have you allocated in time for cyber security training? Employees are the first layer of cyber defence in any business so ensuring they can spot common cyber security issues or risks is essential.

Whilst your new employees are no doubt professional and have a suite of references who can account for this, as humans we are all capable of making mistakes and falling for traps laid by criminals.

So, why are new employees a cyber threat?

• They may lack knowledge of the organisations security policy

• Be prone to making mistakes in the first few days of work due to new information overload

• Have poor cyber awareness or poor cyber security habits

• Be targeted by criminals

• Fail to secure their remote working environment

• Apply to your organisation with malicious intent

How else can new and current employees pose a threat to my business?

According to the 2023 Cyber Security Breaches Survey, the most common threat to businesses remains as phishing attacks with 59% of businesses said they had experienced a phishing attack in the last 12 months. This is a key reason why training your employees, whether new or long serving is so important, cyber security training will educate them on the following topics:

• Recognising social engineering

• How to protect against the different ‘ishings’ e.g. spear phising, vishing, email phishing and smishing

• The importance of strong passwords

• Social media conduct

• Handling a ransomware attack

At The South East Cyber Resilience Centre, we provide affordable and professional Cyber Security Awareness Training that is tailored to each individual audience to provide the right level of skills and context for your business. We use cyber security trainers who are highly knowledgeable, personable and friendly and pride themselves on providing the right environment for your people to feel comfortable and to ask questions.

Find out more about our Cyber Security Awareness Training.

Have you considered the risk your company devices pose?

Remote working is now a normal occurrence within many companies, with this comes new risks that aren’t always apparent when working within an organisation’s physical premises. To help your employees work securely when working remotely, any device you hand over must have some key security barriers in place.

As a small business owner, we know that you often do not handle the set up of new starters and employee devices. To help you understand what 'good' looks like and to enable you to work with your IT provider, whether that's internal staff or an outsourced company, we have created a Cyber Security: New Device Checklist for Employers.

This checklist will help your business improve its resilience to cybercrime and ensure your employees stay secure working in the office or remotely.

Download our handy checklist here or the button below:

Has your business recently bought new devices, but you're unsure if they're secure? Do you want to secure your network after buying new laptop devices? We can help!

Contact us today to discuss any cybersecurity questions relating to device security, and you can learn more about our Remote & Website Vulnerability Assessment(s). We can ensure your company is not open to cyber-attacks and start building your cyber resilience today.