Does your business have employees? If so, cyber security (and cyber security awareness) are critical to your survival in an industry dominated by growing virtual crime. Certainly, most people know about costly identity theft and reputation-destroying network hacks, which seem to be on the news almost every day.

Someone once said, “Never stop learning, because life never stops teaching.” That’s the perfect attitude to apply towards security awareness programs.

The keyword is learning. Not to be confused with training, learning is the process of absorbing information to improve skills and the ability to apply knowledge in a real-life situation. Training is undoubtedly an important part of that, but if you want your SAP to be successful, it’s the learning part of the equation that’s most important.

Security isn’t just a technical problem. It’s also a people problem, and keeping the people side of the security equation strong requires that all people in your organization have an awareness of security. This is why security awareness programs are so important.

The goal of a security awareness program — as you may have guessed — is to increase organizational understanding and practical implementation of security best practices. A program like this should apply to all hires — new and old, across every department — and it should be reinforced on a regular basis.