Last week we touched on the importance of having a Cyber Hygiene Policy, but we wanted to explore this subject in a bit more detail. Many companies are unclear how to engage the workforce to understand everyone is responsible for protecting the corporate network.
Within all businesses there are those who are engaged, focussed, performance-driven and strive to perform to their full potential every day. Unfortunately, there is a percentage within organisations of employees who lack enthusiasm and drive – but is this due to not caring or because they feel unsupported?
So how do we engage the whole team to understand the importance of Security in the workplace?
The aim of a Cyber Hygiene Policy is to improve the security overall from internal and external threats through effective collaboration and engagement.
Often the IT and Security Teams are looked on as areas of the business that hamper employees from performing in their roles, Then you have the IT professionals who are called upon to solve a problem and go to their favourite mantra – User Error making individuals feel uncomfortable.
Cyber Security Professionals must take a step back from the patching, discovering, and resolving attacks to advocate for their work. If other departments feel the security division does not care or appreciate their IT needs in their respective roles – why should they care about having a sense of ownership about cyber security.
According to Engaging for Success: enhancing performance through employee engagement (engageforsuccess.org) there are 4 enablers to engage a workforce:-
Strategic narrative – Strong executives with a compelling, empowering story about the organization and its future.
Engaging managers – Managers that act like coaches, focusing on their people as individuals, giving them direction and objectives, and encouraging them to stretch themselves.
Employee voice – Employees who are respected as the solution, not the problem, and invited to give thoughts and opinions which are listened to and acted upon.
Integrity – An organization where values are reflected in how people actually behave, with no gap between what people say and what they do.
The UK study offers some particularly good insights for security engagement and click on the link above to see the full report. So, with that in mind, a valued workforce will be happier to change, adapt and grow – can only be good news for the future!