Kaspersky ASAP: A tool to keep your employees #cyberfit
As much of the world went into lockdown earlier this year in support of containment measures to combat the spread of the novel Coronavirus, use of the Internet and digital services surged! The regrettable downside to this surge of digital adoption is that many users – whether in their business or private capacity – were ill prepared for the very real threats that come with greater Internet connectivity, and have been sitting ducks in a year that can be described as ‘open season hunting’ for cybercriminals, where nothing and no one has been off limits.
Businesses the world over and of all make-up and size had to quickly adapt to flexible, remote and work-from-home strategies at speeds and scales many were not ready for. This included small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) who – while are often praised for their nimbleness and being able to adopt innovations and adapt to change quickly and effectively – often also lack skills and asset resources internally to keep up with the growing number of malicious threats in an ever changing cyber threat landscape. Compounding this is the fact that employees are often the weakest link in the cybersecurity chain – putting business at risk sometimes without even knowing it.
In fact, most cybersecurity incidents within organisations are caused by the human factor (mistakes, negligence, low digital literacy, etc.). And, as research by Kaspersky has revealed, employees ‘confidently’ make 90% of all security awareness mistakes.
To put this into context, for example, a recent survey by Kaspersky showed that more than half of responses (52%) to questions about reasons why employees should use corporate IT resources (such as mail and messaging services or cloud storage) when working from home were incorrect. In 88% of cases, remote employees thought that they could explain this correctly. Almost the same proportion of mistakes (50%) was made when answering a question about how to install software updates. In this case, a staggering majority of 92% of those who had provided wrong answers, believed they had that required skill.
There is no denying that cyberattacks can lead to enormous losses and damage to an organisation’s reputation, and it’s no wonder then that businesses globally are increasingly investing in staff training in information security skills. But the methods used are often ineffective. Employees do not want to study, and if they study, then they quickly forget everything. We need more advanced methods.
To support organisations in addressing this need and to help them train staff on the evolving threat landscape in a memorable way, Kaspersky launched the company’s Automated Security Awareness Platform (ASAP) – an easy-to-manage online tool which builds employee’s cybersecurity skills level by level.
The Kaspersky ASAP training has been created by leading cybersecurity experts and offers businesses an inevitably reusable online tool on which to launch and run their internal cybersecurity awareness programmes – and upskills employees on how to better protect themselves and the business.
Want to know more? Listen to the podcast above, where Gareth Cliff speaks with Lehan van den Heever, Enterprise Cyber Security Advisor at Kaspersky for Africa, about the changing cyber threat landscape, and how you can prepare your business by upskilling your employees.