How can accounting firms train their team members to be cyber secure?

Are you keeping your accounting firm team up to date with cybersecurity training?

82% of data breaches involve a human element, according to Verizon’s 2022 Data Breaches Investigations Report. Human error can be as simple as an employee not recognizing a phishing email and being tricked into giving away their credentials.

With these sobering facts in mind, coupled with the fact that cyber crime is rising each year, it’s highly important that accounting firms invest in cyber security training for their teams. Your team is the last line of defense against breaches and cyber attacks.

Starting a training program isn’t easy, but we’ve outlined 3 simple steps you can take to train your team here.

1. Create best practices around cyber security

Provide your employees with documents that outline what they should and should not be doing when it comes to security. The Practice Protect University has resources like the Employee Cyber Safe Guidelines Pack and best practice checklists that accounting firms can easily provide to their employees.

You can also do the following:

• Remind employees to create complex passwords for their email and any applications they login to for work purposes
• Remind employees not to ‘blend’ personal passwords or credentials with professional ones

2. Train your team to spot suspicious emails and hacking attempts

It can be as simple as showing your team a screenshot of a phishing email and identifying why it’s a malicious one. While this may seem like a very simple training method, it’s a very effective one as it will reinforce the habit to always check emails for suspicious links, attachments, and other hallmarks of phishing emails.

Check out our handy guide on Spotting the Phishing Scam here.

3. Inform team members of current scams going around

Keep an eye on the news and disseminate information about scams going around. A scam is more believable if it’s in conjunction with a real issue (as proven by the deluge of scams around Coronavirus).

We recommend that you subscribe to websites that provide updates to scams like Scamwatch (the Australian government’s website for scam awareness) or the FTC’s Consumer Alerts service.

Want to explore a cyber security solution that gives you team training resources at your fingertips? Book a demo with our team to learn more.