"Cybercriminals regard unsuspecting employees as prime targets. Staff training against malicious threat tactics is becoming extremely important, especially since cybercrime strategies are constantly evolving and increasing in sophistication," says Jayson O'Reilly, director of Sales & Innovation at security services and solutions provider, DRS. "Simply running an antivirus program on company servers is not nearly enough."
DRS' recent partnership with Popcorn Training is a result of this need, and offers DRS's clients an opportunity to allow data protection services and user education to work hand in hand.
According to Popcorn Training, businesses face two different kinds of threats - namely noisy threats such as viruses, hacks, and malware that can interfere and hinder business, and quiet threats, which businesses and users are largely unaware of. Unfortunately, business investment in protecting against quiet threats only happens when there is an unauthorised and/or malicious disclosure and related security breaches.
Popcorn Training provides awareness campaigns through story-based training in a fun, yet proactive approach, that ensures security awareness risks are mitigated in a current and relevant way that is memorable to the user.
"Popcorn Training's programs also reduce and mitigate potential exposure to non-compliance with specific regulatory and legislative requirements such as POPI, PCI DSS, and King III," explains O'Reilly. "We have partnered with Popcorn Training to provide our customers with an even more comprehensive security offering, and are proud to be at the forefront of helping to fill this dangerous gap."
Popcorn Training, which has recently expanded its Cape Town-based business to Gauteng, has 32 years' combined corporate experience and qualifications in Security and Governance, Information Technology, Business Process Analysis, Training, Corporate Communications, Psychology, Change Management and Marketing.
Some of its more popular training courses include information security awareness training, compliance awareness training, and Web application security awareness training. Popcorn Training clients include Peninsula Beverage Co., Old Mutual, Telkom, Sanlam and The Foschini Group, to name a few.
According to O'Reilly, user education in security should form an essential part of any business, and Popcorn Training provides an easily-accessible and effective way to achieve this awareness. "Despite spending thousands of rands on technology products and solutions to protect your company's infrastructure, it still happens that cybercriminals gain information from an uneducated and unsuspecting users. We see it in our industry all the time."
