Whether you and your employees are on-site or working remotely, your company needs a strong security awareness program. No matter how loyal, savvy, and hardworking your crew is, the business you’ve spent years building up will be exponentially safer when your staff gets cybersecurity training. These are just five of the many topics Alterity’s cybersecurity courses cover.

There is no shortage of scary and fearful things going on in the world – a global pandemic, riots, hurricanes, “murder hornets”, “meth gators”, and of course cyber threats and crime. This constant flow of information around all these things has caused a general sense of fear and dread that needs to be addressed. While we could talk about each of these things at length, this article will focus on cyber threats.

An innocent-looking email from a friend. A fake email from a bank. A message that looks like it came from your company’s IT guy prompting a password change. All it takes is one wrong click by an uninformed employee. Then hackers are in, accessing and even gaining control of your corporate system, creating a huge mess to clean up and compromising customer trust forever. Phishing is a serious threat to any business. And as cybercriminals get increasingly sophisticated, there’s always a new threat, a cutting-edge scam, to look out for. Keep reading to learn everything you need to know about phishing attacks in 2020 so you can keep your network safe from hackers and coach your team to prevent attacks with anti-phishing training.

Cybercriminals are busier than ever. They’re taking advantage of the disruption caused by the COVID-19 crisis and the fact that many employees are now working from home, many on personal computers. Cybercrime is costly to your reputation and your bottom line. And that cost is growing: a recent Hiscox survey showed that “losses stemming from cybersecurity threats had grown almost six-fold, jumping from a median cost of $10,000 to $57,000 per company within the reported period (12/24/19–2/3/20).” The report also noted that losses may have been underreported.

When coworkers can’t sit side by side in the office, it’s harder for them to know who they’re really dealing with. Is the person signing into your company system actually who they say they are? And with a huge email uptick due to work going 100% remote, workers can be in a hurry to excavate their inboxes and might not be sufficiently cautious. That’s why companies must devise and implement good security awareness programs and make cybersecurity courses available to all workers. Employees should use two-factor authentication and create stronger passwords and IT professionals must monitor access controls remotely. Fortunately, this isn’t as daunting as it may sound, because Alterity offers excellent cybersecurity classes online.