Why is IT Security Awareness important?

IT Security Awareness is important at these times:

• Before a data breach: Employees with access to data are the single largest contributing factor to modern data breaches. Educating employees on IT Security pitfalls is critical to maintaining data security and avoiding an unwanted data breach.
• After a data breach: Any organization that suffers a data breach that involves loss of personally identifiable information (PII) or sensitive information will experience costly litigation and a loss of public confidence. Liability is minimized if an organization can show that reasonable care had been taken to ensure the confidentially and integrity of such data.

Is eLearning effective for IT Security Awareness?

Face-to-face delivery of IT Security Awareness is the most effective educational medium, but it is time intensive, costly, and inconvenient for employee schedules, meetings, workloads, vacation, sick leave, and personal time off.

eLearning delivery of IT Security Awareness provides a cost-effective, convenient means of delivery for new employees and works conveniently into and around existing employee schedules.

What other benefits does eLearning provide?

• When a modern Learning Management System (LMS) delivers eLearning to employees, each student is identified and tracked through the course. LMS reports are convenient, accurate, and easily available. LMS reports on IT Security Awareness training are a viable metric for security audits.
• eLearning reports on quiz scores identify low-scoring employees as possible security risks who may need further investigation.
• eLearning course content can be easily revised throughout the year.

CSI 2007 Survey

In a survey taken by the Computer Security Institute in 2007, 486 respondents were asked to rate the importance of several security awareness topics to their organizations. For more information on how companies view security awareness and other security metrics, download the full report at http://www.gocsi.com.