What is end-user education, and why is it so important to invest in?

What is end-user education, and why is it so important to invest in?

Whether you have been working from home throughout the whole pandemic or something that you have just started doing, your business’s security is a chief concern. When working from home, you cannot see what your other employees are up to, and you cannot see what lands in their inboxes or when they answer the phone to a potential client or business partner. 

All of this can be nerve-racking, as it is no longer just a case of passing the phone to someone who might know more sitting next to you in the office or getting someone to check out an email that they might be unsure of. With the threat of cybercrime rising every single week, end-user education is now more critical than ever.

What is end-user education?

End-user education, or security awareness training, is an inexpensive method of educating your staff on cybercrime threats and identifying a potential attack. These can consist of various social engineering methods. It enhances the security within an organization from the inside and can be invaluable knowledge to all employees. To learn more about the specifics of security awareness training, click here.

How can it protect you at work?

Knowing the threats of cybercrime can save your business thousands of dollars. The cost of recovery from a cyber attack is massive. Not only this, it can damage the reputation of your business to the point of bankruptcy. You can lose any trust you have from your customers, impacting other opportunities and startups in the future. On balance, it might well be worth the expense to prevent something so catastrophic from happening, especially when the solution might be so simple. 

How can it protect you at home?

When working from home, you open yourself and your family members to a whole range of threats. By knowing the tell-tale signs of a potential cyberattack, you can help protect them from malware, ransomware, and other kinds of scams that could damage not only your family but your wider social contacts too. Doing this can also protect those same people from identity fraudulence. 

Working from home, as mentioned earlier, can have a risk factor to this too. Not only are you putting those at home at risk, but those at work, too. Suppose a hacker or cybercriminal gets into your network or the device itself. In that case, it can give away a lot of details regarding your digital identity and those of the people you have interacted with, making them a target for attack. 

In conclusion, having end-user education or security awareness training can protect the ones you love and the people you have worked with (or are currently working for). It can be a great way to prepare for any of the many cyber threats that you face in the future and can be a valuable way to avoid an issue that you could easily prevent but has dire consequences if poorly handled.