How People Always Make the Best Exploit
It’s amazing how cyber-attacks hit like a tornado and it looks so much like organizations can only do little or nothing about the resilient protection of their network and system infrastructure. Many organizations have most of the security appliances in place, the technologies are in full operation with continuous processes, yet they still fall victim to cyber-attacks.
So much attention has been given to technology and processes over time while the people behind the technologies and end-users are given little or no attention. Cybersecurity employees in organizations have the technical know-how to keep the company’s infrastructure safe but what about the front desk officer, the receptionist who is the first point of contact of the organization?
This is where cybersecurity becomes the concern of every employee of an organization, not only the IT Security workforce behind the servers and the network monitoring system. Every employee irrespective of their roles and responsibility must begin to work with security mindfulness, understand basic cybersecurity concepts, and think about cybersecurity and its application to their role.
The Challenge
People always make the best exploit because people are vulnerable, it only takes few attempts of accessing their vulnerability to get them exploited. Emotion is one of the vulnerabilities that make people easily exploitable. If some or all of your employees are not emotionally strong, that can be a vulnerability that can be exploited to successfully launch a cyber-attack against your organization.
Low self-esteem, low self-worth, imposter syndrome, disloyalty, dishonesty, greed, etc. are traits that can be leveraged by cybercriminals to gain access to your organization’s network through the employees. All these looks so minute but can be a big deal if not attended to. We have cared enough about the technology and processes; it is high time we focused on the people behind the technology and the end-users.
IT Security employees of an organization that is not well trained in character development, emotional intelligence, etc. can fall victim to these human factors and it’s going to be a big shot at your organization. This is why many organizations keep patching their systems, acquire more security appliances and implement continuous network monitoring, but still fall victim to cyber-attacks.
The Hide-Out
The best threats are necessarily not hidden in the networks neither are they hid in the systems but people. Your organization’s systems or network might not have any malware until an insider injects one whether through human error or malicious intent.
People are the best hide-out of threats to your organization, this is why the people behind the technology and the end-users must be given a great deal of attention. You can transform this threat hide-out (people) to become your strongest firewall against social engineering, and untheorized access.
The Way Out
The way out is to build a robust human firewall. Make your employees’ human firewalls between your organization and the outside world. Make them impenetrable. You can strengthen your employees, make them impenetrable, and defense against cyber-attacks, and untheorized access to your organization’s network and systems through the following:
● Create a Cybersecurity Awareness Education Program for employees
● Build a System to keep track of employees’ cybersecurity learning progress e.g. Develop a Learning Management System website for Cybersecurity Education.
● Run Phishing Simulations to strengthen employees’ comprehension of social engineering and its diverse tactics
● Train employees on emotional intelligence
● Organize seminars that deal with attitude, morals, and ethics for employees
● Implement a character development program for employees and build a system that monitors their character improvement
● Create security policies that cut across every department of the organization and is easily implementable by individual employees
● Grow the loyalty and trust of employees through incentives, benefits, allowances, and promotions.
While building a resilient network and systems infrastructure build strong people infrastructure where your cybersecurity architecture is inclusive of human firewalls that defend against social engineering and unauthorized access. Remember that people always make the best exploit.