With cyber security threats becoming increasingly sophisticated, every click carries a potential risk. Businesses know this and are responding with investments in compliance measures such as firewalls and stricter access controls.
But true security extends beyond these technical aspects. It requires fostering a culture where security awareness and engagement are second nature.
So how can your business establish and nurture a secure culture? One that acknowledges, prevents, and minimises the cost of human error? This article, part of our ongoing human risk series, will help you understand what good looks like when it comes to human risk management and equip you with best practices for your business to adopt.
What is a secure culture anyway?
Creating a secure culture starts by having a shared definition of what that means. To us, a secure culture goes beyond updating passwords, installing firewalls, and reporting phishing attempts. Rather, it’s about bringing everyone in your organisation onboard, creating shared ownership in protecting your enterprise through ongoing vigilance and responsibility. The goal is to establish collective beliefs and behaviours around cyber threats. Specifically, to shape how employees perceive and react to cyber threats and encourage them to identify and report not just malicious attempts, but also accidental mistakes that could compromise sensitive information.
Compliance ≠ Security
A common misconception in human risk management is that as long as organisations comply with security policies, they are secure. But that is not real security.
Yes, you can require your employees to complete mandatory training videos and slides, but clicking through, ticking boxes, and haphazardly paying attention to webinars won’t cut it. The mindset around these exercises being a chore rather than a strategic imperative must ultimately change to achieve a true cultural shift that’ll protect your organisation. Security awareness training is a good first step, but it isn’t enough to build a secure organisation on its own.
Why does it matter?
Whether intentional or accidental, employee actions can lead to significant data breaches, financial loss, and reputational damage. Creating a secure culture not only serves to mitigate these risks but transforms them into strengths that fuel business performance.
Strengthening incident response and minimising disruption
When everyone in your organisation has a strong security mindset and practises good security hygiene, they are less likely to fall for phishing scams or accidentally expose sensitive data. Having such a culture facilitates a move away from a reactive approach towards incident response to a proactive one where employees are prepared to respond quickly and effectively to a situation and minimise potential disruption.
Improving reputation and customer loyalty
A secure culture instils confidence in customers that you care and will protect their sensitive data. By demonstrating that everyone in your workforce is engaged in strong, shared security practices, organisations can improve their reputation and increase customer loyalty. This is critically important in a time of almost-instant information sharing across the globe. Building customer trust and confidence will set you apart with current customers and attract new prospects, too.
How can you create a secure culture?
From our experience, there are three key steps to fostering a successful, secure culture organisation-wide:
Engaging training
As mentioned above, security awareness training is a good start, but how it’s administered can make a big difference in how it is received. We recommend interactive employee training covering a range of cyber threats. The key here is incorporating practical skills to help employees identify risks and the actions they can take to mitigate them. Simulations, gamified experiences, and real-world scenario walk-throughs are great additions to make training more engaging.
Open communication
Fear of blame is a major reason why suspicious activity and accidental errors are not reported. For employees to feel comfortable taking responsibility for their mistakes, its essential to create an environment where they feel safe to report incidents and ask questions. An atmosphere of psychological and job safety will give employees the confidence to bring issues forward versus letting them manifest into bigger problems. Recognising and rewarding employees who are actively fostering your secure culture can further reinforce good practice.
Uniformity and flexibility
You’re only as strong as your weakest link. That’s why, when it comes to a secure culture, it’s important for all global teams to be brought on board. However, in our work with matrixed multi-national and global companies, we understand it can be hard to enforce uniformity due to varying regulations and cultural norms. Instead of having a one-size-fits-all approach, allow for flexibility by implementing a core set of security principles and measures that are applicable globally. Providing a global baseline with local flexibility increases the chances of creating a comprehensive secure culture.
Patience and understanding
Building a secure culture will take time because changing behaviour takes time. It requires investment, commitment across all levels, and a willingness to adapt things over time based on the needs of your employees and organisation. Remember that you’re building a culture and an additional form of defence by shifting employees mindsets from following rules because they have to to actually understanding the importance of cyber security and knowing what steps to take to protect themselves and your organisation in the long run.
