Employees need more IT training to combat growing cyber risks

Businesses are told to improve IT training so that employees are up to speed with and are able to better respond to the increase in cyber risks.

Aon Risk Solutions global practice leader (cyber) Kevin Kalinich (pictured) said despite companies worldwide having increased investment in cyber security, the value of that will be lost if employees are not fully trained.

Speaking to StrategicRISK, he said: “Even if you design a superior infrastructure, the ‘people component’ still becomes a critical point. The challenge is to make sure companies understand that there is still a ‘people component’.

“People need training, whether they work for the government, a corporation, a service provider, a product provider or a middle man, people must be trained when it comes to new technologies such as social media, mobile communications, Big Data analytics and cloud computing.”

Kalinich was speaking after the World Economic Forum’s Grand Conference 2013 in Amsterdam where one of the key messages was teamwork.

He said that members of staff need to work together. Dealing with cyber threats must be a co-ordinated approach, he added.

In terms of Aon’s cyber security offering, Kalinich said it would be “taking a step back in order to take two steps forward”, as it adopts a long-term approach.  

He said: “We are starting to balance our traditional focus – moving away from trying to sell insurance solutions for everything, to adding an assessment and analytics component. We are combining the broking group with our consulting group with respect to cyber exposure, identification and analysis.”