Security has become a vital element in any organization. It can make or break your organization. Proper measures that protect all your software and digital components should be put in place. Security experts and IT experts should also be part of your organization. Your IT team should be constantly and frequently trained on new and emerging security concerns. One thing you should know is that cyber attackers and cyber vulnerabilities are dynamic.
They are sophisticated and clever, ever coming up with new tricks on how to carry out a cyber-attack. It is for this reason that you must keep all your IT team and security experts and software developers properly trained. Security training, if done right, can transform your IT team from just being a liability into being one of the greatest assets your organization has.
However, implementing training may not be a walk in the park. It will come in the company of a myriad of challenges. Proper measures should be put in place to ensure that such challenges are dealt with appropriately. Some of the challenges that you are likely to encounter during software security training and their solutions are discussed below.
Challenge 1: Inadequate Funding for Security Training
Nowadays, everything costs money. Software security training will call for proper funding. Sadly, most organizations do not set out adequate funds to see to it that the software security training program is a success. The training programs will then come to a premature end or they will not be carried out efficiently.
Solution- It is advisable for all organizations to set out a proper budget for the software training program. Adequate funding should be pumped into the program until it successfully comes to an end. While setting out the software training budget, it is always prudent to frame it in terms of the potential cost of a successful data breach that would be incurred if proper training is not undertaken.
Challenge 2: Ignorance and Lack of Understanding of the Importance of Training
Most companies, businesses, and software owners still have not realized the essence of software security training programs. Some will totally not conduct the training, and some will even quash the program prematurely. The fact that you have not experienced any security challenge in the past is not enough reason for you not to conduct the software security training program. This is pure ignorance! Most training programs have ended prematurely because of managers who think that the training is useless.
Solution- your employees and IT team need some sort of training to stay on top of the ever-changing insecurities and hackers that might be targeting your software. Software security training and awareness are indispensable when it comes to the success of your business. Never at any point in time should you postpone or fail to undertake the training program thinking that it is useless.
Challenge 3: Poor Testing and Examination
Most organizations do not carry out testing and examination at the end of the software training program. This is a challenge because it is hard to establish how effective a software training program was. A lazy trainee will sit through the entire training lesson and forget everything. This is like wasting your resources training someone who is not understanding anything.
Solution- Just like in a school situation, your training and awareness program should encompass testing and examination to know how effective the program was. This will help you know how well the employees; IT team and all other trainees have grasped the concepts they were taught. Trainees will pay more attention if they know that an examination will be conducted at the end of the training program. It is not just about testing and examination, the test offered should be quality ones and able to make decisions on how effective the software security training program was. Quality trainee testing and examination will make all the time, money, and resources spent on training worthwhile.
Challenge 4: Poor training practices
One major challenge that faces software security training programs is that of employing poor and old-fashioned training paradigms and approaches. For instance, a software security training and awareness program that requires all the team players to attend the same software training without considering their roles is one perfect example of a poor training approach. Well, this approach might be useful in certain situations such as when there is a need to train your whole team on the basic security measures such as why SSL Certificate encryption is of the essence. However, it does not apply in most situations.
Solution- A good training program is one that establishes different needs of the trainees and then groups the trainees depending on the said needs. Effective training is one that perfectly complements the roles of the trainees. Software developers and IT experts will need the kind of training with a heavy technical focus. Other employees will need training on the basic software security issues. I will, therefore, advise you to customize your training program based on the role, otherwise, you will just be wasting your time money, and resources. Relevance is key. Besides that, you must make the lessons as engaging as possible. The lessons should encompass elements like demos and case studies.
Challenge 5: The Fast Evolution of Hackers and Hacking Techniques
Hackers are clever and they will always try to use new and sophisticated tricks to carry out a hack. It is for this reason that the number of cyber-attacks happening each day has skyrocketed to extreme levels. A Juniper research report titled ‘The Future of Cybercrime & Security: Financial and Corporate Threats & Mitigation’ indicates that the majority of security breaches will come from existing IT and network infrastructure. This calls for dynamism in security training. Software security is something that is constantly evolving. Funny enough, most training programs will rely on old and outdated frameworks without the ability to deal with the current security issues. This poses a big challenge to the software security training program.
Solution- If hackers are dynamic, so should you. It all starts with the nature of your training program. It is important to carefully examine the training program to establish how relevant it is in litigating the current and emerging hacking techniques.
Read More: How Should you use the Best Security Bollards for your Site or Locality?
Conclusion
The rate of cyber-attacks has hit alarming heights. Today, every form of software is vulnerable to attacks. It takes proper measures to be on the safer side. One of the measures that you will have to take is to establish a software security training program. It might not be as easy as it sounds. Training comes with a lot of challenges. This article has discussed some of the challenges you are likely to face during software security training and how best to overcome those challenges.
