Why cyber security training should be a priority to every business

Cyber security training is crucial to essentially every business on the planet right now, from one-man bands right up to the world’s most prolific brands. A new infographic from security awareness training provider EveryCloud has compiled a raft of facts and figures illustrating the importance of sound cyber security training and we’ve pulled out some of the most intriguing numbers. In the US last year, IT and healthcare were found to be the most targeted business sectors with 1,040 and 750 incidents respectively, while healthcare suffered around five times more breaches than other industries (536). Regular employees were targeted more than any other kind of worker, due to their perceived lack of online common sense, with attackers most likely to be seeking to acquire confidential business information or privileged account details. In an experiment, 200 unbranded USB sticks were dropped at random public locations and almost a fifth (17 per cent) of the people who found them plugged them into their device. Other lax practices saw 69 per cent of employees handle work-related data whilst being connected to public Wi-Fi, while 59 per cent use the same password across all of their online accounts. Companies are constantly being reminded that employees are often the weakest link in any organisation’s cyber security, with the estimated cost of downtime to a business sitting in excess of $20,000 for over a quarter (27 per cent) of businesses.