Cybersecurity Awareness Training FAQs

If you’re looking for advice on how to keep your healthcare practice safe from cybersecurity threats, we can give you three things off the top of our heads:

Technology. Team. Training.

Most organizations understand just how important it is to be equipped with the most effective cybersecurity technology and to be supported by experienced cybersecurity professionals. It’s the third T that gets overlooked and underestimated most of the time.

Cybersecurity awareness training is often dismissed as unnecessary even before organizations get to know exactly what it’s for, how it’s done, and how it can potentially save an entire practice from falling victim to a malware attack.

Here are a few things you need to know about cybersecurity awareness training.

Why does my practice need cybersecurity awareness training?

There are two types of vulnerabilities that cybercriminals tend to exploit in order to penetrate your IT network: technical and human.

Your organization is likely addressing technical vulnerabilities with technology such as firewalls, antivirus and anti-malware software, multi-factor authentication, etc.

Human vulnerability, however, is where things get tricky because human error is the weakest link in the cyber chain.

In fact, the key takeaway from Verizon’s 2021 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) is that 85% of data breaches in 2020 involved human interaction, and healthcare was among the top industries plagued by basic human error these past several years.

“I think it's very easy in security to forget that what we're securing is not the computer. What we're securing is the organization,” explains Gabe Bassett, a senior information security data scientist for Verizon and a co-author of this year's DBIR. “The organization is the people as well."

Implementing regular cybersecurity awareness training among your workforce is a vital way to keep your healthcare organization safe from increasingly sophisticated cyber threats. With effective training, you can equip every single person in your organization—from intern to CEO—with the knowledge needed to spot, respond to, and avoid cyber threats.

How is cybersecurity awareness training done?

Assess Your Practice

Cybersecurity experts identify the technology and devices you use and need in your practice. By knowing what you use, they can identify and zone in on the potential vulnerabilities your practice is exposed to.

If, for example, your practice relies heavily on email communications and receives direct instructions via email, your staff may be vulnerable to highly targeted phishing attacks.

Identify Your Needs

By looking into the information gathered from the previous step (assessment), your cybersecurity partner can properly identify the areas you would need training on, the method of training that’s most effective, and the approach they can take when implementing it.

For example, when cybersecurity experts learn that your practice is vulnerable to phishing attacks, they can identify whom among your employees require the most attention and how cybersecurity awareness is best applied in their roles within the organization.

By knowing what your cybersecurity training needs are, your cybersecurity partner can create a comprehensive and highly effective training plan to meet them. Such training needs can be identified and categorized based on your practice operations, various staff roles, user access, etc.

Train Your Staff

Using the information gathered in the first two steps of the process, cybersecurity experts then proceed to conduct training sessions with your workforce. The content, approach, and frequency of these sessions will vary depending on the designed training plan as well as the organization’s preference.

Many organizations enjoy training sessions done in person, such as in a classroom setting. However, some organizations—particularly those with remote operations—may find that computer-based training works best for them. A cybersecurity partner trains your workforce by taking into consideration factors such as these.

Check Your Understanding

While a one-time cybersecurity training session can be done, it’s not a setup widely recommended by experienced cyber professionals. Your cybersecurity training program isn’t designed to be a one-time thing.

An important part of the program is when your cybersecurity partner ensures that your team understands what was discussed during training and can effectively apply their learnings in real-life scenarios. 

One of the ways this is done is through regular audits and assessments. Such checks allow experts to identify learning gaps among your workforce and allow them to address these gaps promptly.

For example, cybersecurity experts can periodically launch simulated phishing campaigns within your practice to help gauge your employees’ awareness of cyberattacks, assess how they respond to these attacks, and identify members who need further training.

Plan

If you have a cybersecurity partner, you’ll probably notice that one of the best things about it is having an entire team of cybersecurity experts looking out for your healthcare practice. They not only train you to avoid cybersecurity attacks, they also help you know what to do and how to react if one does occur.

This is called an incident response plan or a contingency plan, and a trusted cybersecurity partner can design one for your practice. They will also make sure that your incident response plan is regularly updated depending on your practice’s cybersecurity needs as well as the emerging threats that your organization may be exposed or vulnerable to.