Benefits of security awareness training

Security in information systems training has come to be one of the most needed requirements in an organization. As Acquisti (2008) explains, in today’s fast moving and technically fragile environment safe communication systems are required to be secure in order to benefit both the company and the society as a whole. This fact needs to be clearly highlighted so that adequate measures be implemented not only to fosters the organization’s daily business transactions but also ensure that the much needed security procedures are implemented within the accepted companies code of ethics and thorough training given.

Think of a case where company’s data is exposed to malicious attacker, this situation is constantly increasing especially among the security illiterate staff having access to sensitive and secretes business information. This information can be like sensitive company’s data, browsing the company’s website through an insecure gateway, receiving emails from suspicious sources and the threat posed by Instant messaging (IM). This paper aims at giving a critical review on the benefits of security awareness training on IT systems to an organization.

Provide better protection for assets We need to help employees identify potential threats since this is one of the most valuable technical advantages a society can get (Brancik, 2008). We need to provide updated information to our staff on the new security risks that have been discovered. The staffs need also to be updated on the current technology so that they easily are aware of security breaches within the e-commerce environment.

Furthermore employees, Brancik, (2008) asserts, business partners, and contractors should be informed that the data on their mobile phone devices and computers portable document format (PDFs), smart phones and thumb drives though are devices that are of value are vulnerable to security breaches so that they are alert whenever a security threat is discovered within their systems. This can enhance swift action to be taken by the IT professionals to cap the situation. Save money

According to Pfleeger and Pfleeger (2007), to reduce the number and extend in security breaches then training is vital. If a security breach is discovered sooner then ways of dealing with it promptly can be devised. , cost to notify customers of breaches, Cost to recovering data altered or lost during an a security breach, non-compliance fines and lost productivity, lost customers(indirect costs), resolving breaches and hoaxes ,time spent investigating) will reduce.

These enables control measures to be added into systems other than adding them into the system that has been installed. Coordination and measuring of all security awareness, education, training should be enhances while duplication of effort is reduced (Pfleeger and Pfleeger, 2007). Improving the Competitive Advantage of your organization and protection of its brand One of the factors in the world of commerce that is focused on by almost all companies is the ability to gain a competitive edge over similar companies.

As explained by Killmeyer (2006) customers should be informed that your organization is considerate in protecting their data. Take a situation where Barclays Bank received when the management decided to protect customers installing ATMs that hides the users’ identity from its printout transaction receipt, if a malicious user were to gain access to unprotected receipt (having users identity and password) what harm will he do to customers’ account?