2017 was filled with privacy and security fiascos.

To start 2018 with a simple, effective, IT security strategy is an excellent New Years resolution and gives your Executive Director peace of mind. Better yet, your peers will tell you this was the best and most fun IT security budget they ever spent.

This list is the backing you need to get budget and roll out new-school security awareness training, ideally right now.

Here are the Top 5 reasons…

1. Social Engineering is the No. 1 go-to strategy for cybercriminals. Unfortunately, their time is money too. Why spend 2 months of research uncovering a potential software vulnerability when you (literally) can create an effective spear-phishing attack in 2 hours? They are going after the human—the weakest link in IT security—and your last line of defense.
2. Ransomware is only going to get worse in 2018. Email is still their favorite attack vector, and their sophistication is increasing by the month. The downtime caused by ransomware can be massive.
3. Compliance requirements for awareness training are being sharpened up. The thinking that you can get away with a yearly one-time, old-school awareness training session for your staff is in the past. On May 25, 2018, enforcement actions for General Data Production Regulation(GDPR) begin. (We can help you with compliance training if you contact us).
4. Legally you are required to act “reasonably” and take “necessary” measures to cope with a threat. If you don’t, you violate either compliance laws, regulations, or recent case law. Your organization must take into account today’s social engineering risks and “scale security measures to reflect the threat”. Today, data breaches cause practically instant class action lawsuits.  There is even possibility for your own employees to file a class action against your own company because your W-2 forms were exfiltrated with CEO fraud.
5. Board members’ No. 1 focus today is cyber security. Some very pointed questions will be asked If they read in the local news that your donor database was hacked and the breach data is being sold on the dark web. Once it becomes clear that your organization did not deploy a simple, effective strategy that could have prevented this, C-level execs will be under fire. Target’s CEO and CISO are just an example. Help your CEO to keep their job.

Tech Networks has strategically partnered with KnowBe4 to provide security awareness training and phishing testing because:

1. KnowBe4 was recognized by Gartner as a Leader in the Magic Quadrant
2. Goldman Sachs recently invested a $30M Series B in KnowBe4 because they believe in their mission
3. The KnowBe4 platform was built from the ground up for IT pros that have 16 other fires to put out
4. The KnowBe4 ModStore has the world’s largest choice in fresh awareness training content
5. Pricing is surprisingly affordable!
6. BONUS: It’s actually a lot of fun to phish your users and get the conversation started.

Feel free to reach out to learn more on how we can help you stay ahead of the cybercriminals in 2018. We can give you a quote for new-school security awareness training and show you how affordable this is.

We also have a free e-book you can download and share: “The Smarter Nonprofit’s Guide to Ransomware”.