Organizations Can Protect Information By Using Symantec Security Awareness Program

Symantec  has released its latest version of the Symantec (News - Alert) Security Awareness Program, which is a comprehensive employee training program designed to help organizations build a workforce that is more security conscious.

 

Symantec Education Services newest version is a training program which includes curriculum to help customers demonstrate regulatory compliance, protect against data breaches and reduce risks associated with employee behavior which could negatively impact their brand reputation.

 

Irida Xheneti, a Security Services research analyst at IDC Research, said that with today’s open IT infrastructure, along with increased use of social networking and Web 2.0 applications within the enterprise, employees have now unconsciously become the ultimate security back door and target of many silent attacks that expose organizations to data loss.

 

Breach of data is often linked to employee behavior. The U.S. cost of a data breach study which was conducted by the Ponemon Institute stated that more than 88 percent of all data breach cases in 2008 was due to insider negligence. The costs associated with data breaches are also on the rise. The study looked at 43 organizations across 17 industry sectors and discovered that the average total cost per reporting company was more than $6.6 million per breach. Over half of the study’s respondents strongly believed that training and awareness programs assist in preventing future breaches.

 

 

Brad Wyckoff, CIO of Meredith Corporation, said: “The Symantec Security Awareness Program has provided Meredith the tools necessary to provide our employees with a heightened awareness of our corporate policies, procedures and guidelines. Working with Symantec, we were able to customize the relevance of the on-line tool and provide it in an easily accessible manner to our employees, enhancing our ability to better protect company data and our brand.”

 

The Symantec Security Awareness Program has some great new features which include an improved user interface with more graphics, searchable transcripts that allow users to quickly search and review key topics with ease and also online syndicated content to help organizations create a unique touch point for security information on their own website.