5 Ways to Mitigate Your New Insider Threats in the Great Resignation

Companies are in the midst of an employee “turnover tsunami”^[1]
with no signs of a slowdown. According to Fortune Magazine,^[2] 40% of the U.S. is
considering quitting their jobs. This trend – coined the great
resignation – creates instability in organizations. High employee
turnover increases security risks, and companies are more
vulnerable to attacks from human factors worldwide.

At Davos 2022^[3], statistics connect the
turmoil of the great resignation to the rise of new insider
threats. Security teams are feeling the impact. It’s even harder to
keep up with your employee security. Companies need a fresh
approach to close the gaps and prevent attacks. This article will
examine what your security teams must do within the new
organizational dynamics to quickly and effectively address unique
challenges.

Handling Your New Insider Threats

Implementing a successful security awareness program is more
challenging than ever for your security team—the new blood coming
in causes cultural dissonance. Every new employee brings their own
security habits, behavior, and ways of work. Changing habits is
slow. Yet, companies don’t have the luxury of time. They must get
ahead of hackers to prevent attacks from new insider threats^[4].

Be sure to handle your organization’s security high-impact
risks:

• Prevent data loss – When employees leave,
  there’s a high risk of sensitive data^[5]
  leaks. Manage off-boarding and close lurking dormant emails to
  prevent data loss.
• Maintain best practices – When new employees
  join the organization, even if security training is well conducted,
  they’re not on par with their peers. Unknown security habits may
  put the organization at risk.
• Ensure friendly reminders – With less staff,
  employees are overburdened and pressured. Security may be
  “forgotten” or neglected in the process.
• Support remote work –To support rapid employee
  recruitment, working at home is a must. Remote work flexibility
  helps to attract and retain new employees.
• Train on the go – Remote work requires
  securing remote devices and dealing with new employee behavior for
  inherent distractions – on the go and at home.

5 Preventive Measures for High Impact in Your
Organization

Security teams must protect companies against new phishing
attempts within the high workforce flux. Practical security
training is key to countering hackers. New techniques and practices
are required to support remote work and new behavioral challenges,
especially during times of high employee turnover. To succeed, your
training must keep cyber awareness fresh for all staff. It must
genuinely transform^[6]
the behavior of your new employees.

Here are five preventive measures to effectively protect your
organization for cyber resilience:

Ensure all staff get continuous training

Security risks^[7]
are constantly evolving and ever-present. All employees are needed
to protect against sophisticated phishing threats.^[8]
It’s even more complicated in the great resignation. With new weak
links, your company is at the greatest risk. Gullible employees
leave security ‘holes’ in your organization’s front line. Security
teams are well aware of the risks.

Research shows that companies must continuously train 100% of
their staff every month. Yet, employees spend little time thinking
about security.

Automated security awareness training like CybeReady^[9] makes it easier to
manage security training for all your staff.

• Instead of manual work, use new, in-depth BI data and reports
  to guide your training plan for new and experienced employees.
• Adjust difficulty level to the role, geography, and risk, to
  flexibly control your diverse employee needs and
  vulnerabilities.
• Raise employee awareness of threats.
• Prevent hacker exploitation and emergency triage with company
  leadership.

Target new employees

Your security depends on employee help and cooperation. Build
best practices on the job. Threat basics aren’t enough to stop
malicious actors. Whether in the office or working remotely,
security training must foster mastery. Start with low difficulty.
Create a foundation. Continually promote learning to the next
level. You must understand and cater to your employee’s needs and
way of work for effectiveness.

Simply sending out emails to employees is not enough for a
robust learning experience. With security awareness^[10] platforms like
CybeReady, training becomes more scientific for continuous,
accurate analysis of your security awareness.

• Adjust your training simulations to employee contexts and
  frequency for mastery.
• Set difficulty level depending on employee behavior and
  results.
• Use intensive, bite-size intervals for success.
• By varying attack scenarios, new employees get proper
  onboarding.
• Put security on the top of the mind of all your staff.

Prioritize your highest risk groups

For a cyber awareness training program to be successful,
security teams must plan, operate, evaluate and adapt accordingly.
Forecasting actual difficulty and targeting groups can be complex.
Security teams must determine future attack campaigns based on
employee behavior and address challenges in a given scenario.

With data-driven
platforms^[11] like CybeReady, your
security teams monitor campaign performance to fine-tune employee
defense.

• Build custom high-intensity training campaigns for your
  high-risk groups.
• Focus on specific challenges for concrete results like:

1) Password and data requests

2) Messages from seemingly legitimate senders and sources

3) Realistic content tailored to a specific department or
role.

• Adapt your training for both individuals and attack vectors
  while respecting employee privacy.
• Shift problematic group behavior to best practices.

Keep busy staff vigilant

Security is 24/7. Keep your training unpredictable to maintain
employee vigilance. Send surprising simulation campaigns in a
continuous cycle. Catch employees off guard for the best learning.
To create high engagement, ensure your training content is relevant
to daily actions. Use short, frequent, and intriguing content in
their own language. Tailor to local references and current
news.

With scientific, data-based
simulations^[12] like CybeReady,
companies mimic the rapidly changing attack environment – plus,
tick all your compliance boxes for a complete solution. Stay
abreast of evolving global phishing trends as they vary around the
world. Focus all your employees on the attacker styles and
scenarios most popular in their geographies and languages. Adjust
frequency to personal and group risk.

Ensure long-term results for every
employee

Take advantage of the ‘golden moment.’ Just-in-time learning is
the key to the most effective results. Instead of random
enforcement training often irrelevant to employees, make a lasting
impression right when mistakes happen. Ensure that your training
uses this limited window of time. People are likelier to remember
the experience and change behavior the next time.

With data
science-driven^[13] cyber security training
platforms like CybeReady, security teams seize the moment of
failure for long-term results. With just-in-time learning,
employees immediately get training on mistakes made upon falling
for a simulation. They retain critical knowledge and respond better
in future attack scenarios. With a new awareness of risks,
transform learning into new behaviors.

Cutting Your Security Risks with a New Level of
Employee Awareness

In global organizations today, seamlessly integrating the latest
security know-how into everyday work is a must to counter the new
risks of the great resignation. It’s more important than ever for
every employee to get up to speed for high cyber resilience
quickly.

Download the CybeReady Playbook^[14] to learn how
CybeReady’s fully automated security awareness training platform
provides the fast, concrete results you need with virtually zero
effort IT, or schedule a product
demo^[15] with one of our
experts.