Guest article by Kim Del Fierro, VP of Marketing for Area 1 Security Cybersecurity is a prevalent issue that’s received increased attention in many companies lately. And no wonder, since it’s continuously been a hot topic brought to the spotlight by the significant data breaches of the past few years.

The good news is that there are plenty of solutions that can help stop cyber criminals in their tracks. The bad news is that many companies don’t take the necessary precautions because they lack proper cybersecurity practices. That leaves them wide open to all sorts of malicious attacks. In prevention, businesses should first build a security culture from within, while ensuring they retain a strong security partner from outside the organization. Here are three steps to creating a culture of cybersecurity.

Aim to Disrupt

If your company’s security culture is at a low level, you’ll need to put in extra effort to change it for the better. That means you’ll have to be disruptive and work on improving the existing cybersecurity mindset of every individual you employ. The ultimate goal of this process is to give the power of knowledge to your employees and spread awareness of the common cybersecurity issues. Without awareness, it’s pointless to hold employees accountable for maintaining security. Humans will always be the weakest link in any system, but that doesn’t mean you should give up on cybersecurity education.

Engage Employees through Education

You can make sure your employees will go through the cybersecurity education process smoothly by making it engaging. Want to teach them all about Business Email Compromise (BEC) and Email Account Compromise (EAC) scams and how to recognize them? Don’t settle for a PowerPoint presentation they’re sure to forget next month.

Instead, make sure they have something to do while they learn —such as organize a competition or let them try getting into the hackers’ shoes. That way, your employees will have a better understanding of what they need to do to maintain security. By helping them learn actively, you will ensure that the knowledge they acquire lasts. No matter how strong your training, remember that it is never foolproof.

Invest to See a Return

Everything you invest in to improve your company’s cybersecurity practices should pay off down the line. If it doesn’t, then it’s ineffective. However, some things are always worth an investment. For example, creating a secure development lifecycle (SDL) is likely to have good ROI. An SDL will cover all the activities you need to perform for each system or software release, which can improve the effectiveness of your cybersecurity practices.

On the other hand, using services that prevent threats from ever reaching you can be even more beneficial. This primarily holds true for forms of attack that traditional defenses, such as firewall and antivirus, can’t stop. Phishing is the cause of 95 percent of data breaches, and with Area 1 Security’s Area 1 Horizon Anti-Phishing Service, you can be sure that any email, web, and network phishing attacks will stop before they become a problem.

We’ve reached the point where cybersecurity has to become an intrinsic part of all business processes. The organizations that fail to make it so eventually find their weaknesses exploited by cybercriminals. To prevent this, build a security culture within your organization and invest in solutions that can minimize or stop threats completely.