Why Employees should be Trained in Good Cybersecurity practices, and why more companies are starting to do so

Imagine this: you are a CEO of a big tech company, and your company has been doing better than ever. Stocks are up, your shareholders are happy, and you have a nearly spotless reputation because you donate to charities and don't get involved in any controversy. Life is great for you, until you get a notification from your phone. It states that information about your new computer has been stolen from the severs from a remote hacker from India. The computer is set to launch in 2 months, and now you don't even have the plans to develop the computer! You immediately order an investigation for what caused this breach, only to find out that the reason why the plans got stolen was because your employees forgot to encrypt the sensitive information, which is what led the hacker from India to steal the information. When you call in the employees, you ask sternly why they allowed the information to be stolen, and they respond: "Encrypting? We were supposed to encrypt the information?" You are about to lose it until you realize that 6 months ago, your board of advisors advised strongly to invest in a cybersecurity training program, to which you dismissed as an "unnecessary expense". Whoops.

This example, while very watered down, shows why cybersecurity in companies is so necessary- in order to properly innovate, we need to protect the information behind the innovation, as most ideas and plans are kept online. Governments fail to require cybersecurity training programs for these companies holding large amounts of information, and companies want to maximize profit while minimizing cost, so obviously companies will not want to spend the time and resources in order to train their employees in cybersecurity practices. However, more and more companies are realizing that this cybersecurity training is actually a very necessary cost in order to protect profits and programs, with one cybersecurity incident after another, a few bucks in the present dedicated to train people in cybersecurity can save 100's of millions of dollars in the future.

Although companies are starting to realize more and more how important cybersecurity is, it is still not enough, as this training is still not properly enforced by government laws and regulations. Our information deserves to be secured by proper cybersecurity practices in order to minimize risk and to maximize security, and we as citizens should attempt to advocate for this policy, and as we step into the new age of AI and tech, we deserve, as consumers, to know that our information that we give to these companies is safe, and that we have a right to be safe, digitally and physically.