The human threat in risk management that can jeopardize cybersecurity

When organizations begin prioritizing their risk management strategies, the human element is something that's hard to predict, but can have significant implications for business security.

With cybersecurity tactics being continuously designed to exploit human imperfection and circumvent highly sophisticated security protocols, it's important for organizations to recognize the need to address the potential behavioral risks posed by their employees.

By gaining a deeper understanding of the psychology used to create various cybersecurity attacks, organizations can put into place important protections designed to improve their overall cybersecurity posture.

Understand and minimize human judgment errors

Certain cognitive biases that we've developed over the years heavily influence the decisions we make in life. For employees, these biases can impact whether or not we make the best decisions regarding cybersecurity. —

If organizations aren't careful, they could potentially lead to additional vulnerabilities that cybercriminals can expose. They can do this by using several social engineering tactics explicitly designed to manipulate human behaviors.

Phishing schemes often prey on the human emotion of fear, curiosity or urgency to inspire action and can trick individuals into unknowingly giving away their secure credentials or downloading malware.

Some effective tips organizations can use to help employees identify phishing campaigns
and make informed decisions when supporting security initiatives include:

●      Maintaining a healthy level of skepticism — It's important for everyone in the organization to approach all unsolicited with a fair amount of skepticism. This is especially true when the context of the email asks for sensitive information or is surrounding the release of financial details.
●      Verifying all sources — Take the time necessary to validate the authenticity of any communications that come into your inbox. If you receive correspondence from someone you've never met, contact the organization directly or use trusted channels to help confirm their legitimacy.
●      Staying cautious around urgent emails — One of the most effective tactics that cybercriminals use in their social engineering schemes is to make individuals feel like they need to act immediately. Anytime a message or email comes through that demands immediate action, employees should ask themselves why this wasn't told to them directly by a supervisor over the phone or in person.

Empower employees

It's becoming more common for organizations to consider the possibility of insider threats when evaluating their risk profiles.

However, insider threats don't necessarily need to be malicious individuals who intentionally damage a company's reputation or exploit their access for financial gain. Many times, "unintentional insider threats" can come from individuals who inadvertently compromise business security by not following best security practices.

This is why organizations should prioritize initiatives designed to train and empower employees to make better security decisions. Taking a more proactive approach to security awareness training helps reduce the risks of unintentional insider threats. It contributes to building a much stronger cybersecurity posture for the whole organization.

Establish a culture of accountability

It's important to help ensure all employees take their role seriously when it comes to contributing to the organization's cybersecurity readiness. To help achieve this, businesses should adopt a few best practices to ensure that employees recognize the importance of shared accountability regarding security.

Continuous risks assessments

Risk assessments are an important element in understanding an organization's level of exposure to cyber-attacks. Formal risk assessments or security audits can help pinpoint specific areas of concern, while penetration testing can help an organization validate the effectiveness of its security confirmations in its networked systems or databases.

Proactive security planning

It's important to make security planning something that happens all year long, not just when something goes wrong. By implementing various security measures, including multi-factor authentication, data encryption and other layers of defense, it helps to take a more proactive stance against cyber criminals and reduces the likelihood of a successful attack taking place.

Build a top-down approach to security readiness

In order to harden a business's cybersecurity readiness, it requires more than just investments in technology. There should be guidance that originates from senior leadership and extends through every department in the organization.

Empowering employees through ongoing training is essential to create this environment. Businesses can conduct real-world scenarios that teach the possible consequences of having a passive attitude towards security breaches, making the risks the business faces every day something more tangible and easier to understand.

Having the business formatted to work within frameworks that support certifications like HITRUST or PCI DSS can also offer a structured approach to managing risk and data compliance.
By having committed leadership and more engaged employees, organizations can build a multi-layered defense against behavioral risks.