A cyber security baseline is a set of essential practices and policies that your organisation must observe to maintain a secure IT infrastructure. Creating a baseline includes understanding your people, what they know, and their attitude and behaviour towards security.
A documented baseline serves as a framework for internal audits to ensure that people follow your processes. This baseline serves as a guide for developing an awareness program tailored to your organisation’s specific needs.
1. Understanding staff security behaviours
Before improving your organisation’s baseline, you need to identify where it currently sits. You need to understand your team’s attitude toward preventative behaviour and any habits they might have that put the organisation at risk.
You can tailor your organisation’s awareness program by taking the time to identify individual team members’ attitudes and behaviours towards cyber security. For example, some people may be more likely to click on malicious links or download files, while others will be incredibly diligent about verifying suspicious requests. By understanding and addressing these attitudes, you can provide awareness programs tailored to your team’s specific needs.
It is also important to consider the motivations behind risky cyber security behaviour. Do people feel rushed to complete tasks? Are they trying to find the easiest way to get things done? Knowing the reasons behind their decisions can be a useful starting point for creating an effective cyber security awareness plan.
2. Identifying vulnerabilities in the business
Without understanding the vulnerabilities in your systems, you cannot accurately assess the risk level and, therefore, cannot develop effective plans and strategies to prevent incidents. For this reason, your organisation needs a comprehensive baseline. When you create a baseline in cyber security, it allows you to quickly identify potential exposures and improve defences before significant damage occurs.
For example, if your organisation does not leverage multi-factor authentication (MFA), it would be worthwhile putting up these defences and educating staff about the importance of adhering to these practices. Ensuring employees know the risks and how to reduce them will help protect the company’s data and reputation. By understanding cyber security vulnerabilities in the business environment, you can better inform employee awareness programs and provide effective learning opportunities.
By gaining a profound understanding of cybersecurity vulnerabilities within the unique business environment, your organisation can better inform employee awareness programs and provide them with highly effective learning opportunities, thus bolstering your overall cybersecurity posture.
3. Delivering targeted knowledge courses
Targeted knowledge courses, including cyber security games, are an excellent method for improving your cyber security baseline. These courses can target specific behaviours and vulnerabilities. You can also tailor them to the specific roles and responsibilities of groups of employees and varying levels of cyber security knowledge. The aim is to lift your organisation’s baseline by educating people on the minimum actions they should take to protect the business.
Targeted knowledge courses provide employees with a comprehensive understanding of all aspects of cyber security, from recognising phishing attempts and other malicious activities to learning how data security systems work. With this targeted knowledge, you give people the tools to prevent attacks and respond quickly in the event of a breach.
Layer 8’s Cyber Escape Rooms can improve your cyber security baseline
Layer 8 Security’s Cyber Escape Rooms are a tried and true method of ensuring your team gain and retain valuable cyber security and awareness knowledge. Whether working remotely or finding a cause to get the team back together, Layer 8 Security can tailor a physical or virtual Cyber Escape Room to suit your group. You can book a preview session to learn more about the fun and engaging experience.
