Articles
8/13/2021
10 minutes

Establishing a Cyber Security Culture: The Balance Between Trust and Risk

Written by
Copado Team
Table of contents

Originally published by New Context.

A cyber security culture stems from how an organization communicates the need for security and the technology they provide to enable it. It all starts with awareness, in that employees need to know and understand the rules. Unfortunately, that’s where a lot of organizations fail. They may have protocols laid out but not focus on helping employees understand why they’re necessary.

Every single person at an organization needs to feel accountable for cyber security, whether they’re in technical positions or not. To make this easier, organizations can adopt technology that simplifies security while preserving the business value of assets.

Social Proof and Communication in a Cyber Security Culture

There is a common phenomenon that humans exhibit called social proof. Psychologist Robert Cialdini coined the term as one of six principles of persuasion he examined. Simply stated, it means that people will model the behaviors of others when they’re uncertain about a situation. Like most persuasion principles, it can have a positive or negative effect.

Consider a new employee on his first day at a company. He’s given a handout that explains the requirements for setting a complex security password for network access. As he’s about to do that, one of his new coworkers says, “Oh, we all just use ‘password.’” That new employee is then far more likely to default to an insecure password because it’s what everyone else does at the company.

On the upside, when people see others following the standards of a company, they are more likely to do so as well. That is why it’s so important that upper management establish and model the same security principles that they want to see in their staff.

Another essential part of security awareness is communication. It’s not enough to tell workers what to do. It’s vital to explain why it’s that way. Managers should try to outline how security standards apply to the specific employee. For example, in the password scenario from above, they may bring up a data breach in the past that lead to massive repercussions for the individuals with insecure passwords.

By modeling the behavior they want to see in their workers and communicating the specific reason for security protocols, it’s far easier to establish a solid cyber security culture. Of course, that only gets the company part of the way there. They must also leverage technology.

 

Social Proof and Communication in a Cyber Security Culture | Copado

Using Technology to Enforce the Culture

Very broadly, there are two different kinds of cyber security rules that an organization will deal with: rules enforced through infrastructure and rules established through policy.

Ideally, when an enforced process is feasible, it should be used. Policy-only security protocols should be the exception, not the rule. When used, it’s essential to audit the system and take remedial action with those not meeting the requirement.

 

Of course, enforced security policies can create some issues when it comes to business value. While the goal is to protect assets, protocols that are too stringent will impede work. They will slow down processes and dissuade employees from completing critical tasks. This is an age-old issue. A task will either be secure, or it will be easy. It’s also one of the biggest problems with agile development methodologies. In the interest of speeding the process, workers bypass necessary security steps. However, this isn’t an insurmountable issue.

The best solution is to make the complex security protocols easy to follow. Consider a common security standard that a lot of people don’t enable—multifactor authentication. Many times, signing in with the password and getting a texted pin seems like too much trouble for what is protected. Some companies, like Google and Apple, have shifted to using biometric identification as the second method. It’s simpler for someone to provide their fingerprint or voice to add an additional layer of security, so they’re more likely to adopt it.

Working with a Trusted Cyber Security Partner

Simplicity for the user is one of the most significant factors to success in building a cyber security culture. When protocols are easy to follow and communicated, company-wide adoption goes up. Individuals are more empowered to take an active role in their organization’s security without disrupting the flow of business processes, and leaders can have greater peace of mind knowing that valuable information has been treated with the utmost care.

 

 

Book a demo

About The Author

#1 DevOps Platform for Salesforce

We Build Unstoppable Teams By Equipping DevOps Professionals With The Platform, Tools And Training They Need To Make Release Days Obsolete. Work Smarter, Not Longer.

What is DevOps for Business Applications
Copado Integrates Powerful AI Solutions into Its Community as It Surpasses the 100,000 Member Milestone
Testing End-to-End Salesforce Flows: Web and Mobile Applications
How to get non-technical users onboard with Salesforce UAT testing
DevOps Excellence within Salesforce Ecosystem
Best Practices for AI in Salesforce Testing
6 testing metrics that’ll speed up your Salesforce release velocity (and how to track them)
Chapter 4: Manual Testing Overview
AI Driven Testing for Salesforce
Chapter 3: Testing Fun-damentals
Salesforce Deployment: Avoid Common Pitfalls with AI-Powered Release Management
Exploring DevOps for Different Types of Salesforce Clouds
Copado Launches Suite of AI Agents to Transform Business Application Delivery
What’s Special About Testing Salesforce? - Chapter 2
Why Test Salesforce? - Chapter 1
Continuous Integration for Salesforce Development
Comparing Top AI Testing Tools for Salesforce
Avoid Deployment Conflicts with Copado’s Selective Commit Feature: A New Way to Handle Overlapping Changes
From Learner to Leader: Journey to Copado Champion of the Year
Enhancing Salesforce Security with AppOmni and Copado Integration: Insights, Uses and Best Practices
The Future of Salesforce DevOps: Leveraging AI for Efficient Conflict Management
A Guide to Using AI for Salesforce Development Issues
How to Sync Salesforce Environments with Back Promotions
Copado and Wipro Team Up to Transform Salesforce DevOps
DevOps Needs for Operations in China: Salesforce on Alibaba Cloud
What is Salesforce Deployment Automation? How to Use Salesforce Automation Tools
Maximizing Copado's Cooperation with Essential Salesforce Instruments
Future Trends in Salesforce DevOps: What Architects Need to Know
From Chaos to Clarity: Managing Salesforce Environment Merges and Consolidations
Enhancing Customer Service with CopadoGPT Technology
What is Efficient Low Code Deployment?
Copado Launches Test Copilot to Deliver AI-powered Rapid Test Creation
Cloud-Native Testing Automation: A Comprehensive Guide
A Guide to Effective Change Management in Salesforce for DevOps Teams
Building a Scalable Governance Framework for Sustainable Value
Copado Launches Copado Explorer to Simplify and Streamline Testing on Salesforce
Exploring Top Cloud Automation Testing Tools
Master Salesforce DevOps with Copado Robotic Testing
Exploratory Testing vs. Automated Testing: Finding the Right Balance
A Guide to Salesforce Source Control
A Guide to DevOps Branching Strategies
Family Time vs. Mobile App Release Days: Can Test Automation Help Us Have Both?
How to Resolve Salesforce Merge Conflicts: A Guide
Copado Expands Beta Access to CopadoGPT for All Customers, Revolutionizing SaaS DevOps with AI
Is Mobile Test Automation Unnecessarily Hard? A Guide to Simplify Mobile Test Automation
From Silos to Streamlined Development: Tarun’s Tale of DevOps Success
Simplified Scaling: 10 Ways to Grow Your Salesforce Development Practice
What is Salesforce Incident Management?
What Is Automated Salesforce Testing? Choosing the Right Automation Tool for Salesforce
Copado Appoints Seasoned Sales Executive Bob Grewal to Chief Revenue Officer
Business Benefits of DevOps: A Guide
Copado Brings Generative AI to Its DevOps Platform to Improve Software Development for Enterprise SaaS
Celebrating 10 Years of Copado: A Decade of DevOps Evolution and Growth
Copado Celebrates 10 Years of DevOps for Enterprise SaaS Solutions
5 Reasons Why Copado = Less Divorces for Developers
What is DevOps? Build a Successful DevOps Ecosystem with Copado’s Best Practices
Scaling App Development While Meeting Security Standards
5 Data Deploy Features You Don’t Want to Miss
Top 5 Reasons I Choose Copado for Salesforce Development
How to Elevate Customer Experiences with Automated Testing
Getting Started With Value Stream Maps
Copado and nCino Partner to Provide Proven DevOps Tools for Financial Institutions
Unlocking Success with Copado: Mission-Critical Tools for Developers
How Automated Testing Enables DevOps Efficiency
How to Keep Salesforce Sandboxes in Sync
How to Switch from Manual to Automated Testing with Robotic Testing
Best Practices to Prevent Merge Conflicts with Copado 1 Platform
Software Bugs: The Three Causes of Programming Errors
How Does Copado Solve Release Readiness Roadblocks?
Why I Choose Copado Robotic Testing for my Test Automation
How to schedule a Function and Job Template in DevOps: A Step-by-Step Guide
Delivering Quality nCino Experiences with Automated Deployments and Testing
Best Practices Matter for Accelerated Salesforce Release Management
Maximize Your Code Quality, Security and performance with Copado Salesforce Code Analyzer
Upgrade Your Test Automation Game: The Benefits of Switching from Selenium to a More Advanced Platform
Three Takeaways From Copa Community Day
Cloud Native Applications: 5 Characteristics to Look for in the Right Tools
Using Salesforce nCino Architecture for Best Testing Results
How To Develop A Salesforce Testing Strategy For Your Enterprise
What Is Multi Cloud: Key Use Cases and Benefits for Enterprise Settings
5 Steps to Building a Salesforce Center of Excellence for Government Agencies
Salesforce UI testing: Benefits to Staying on Top of Updates
Benefits of UI Test Automation and Why You Should Care
Types of Salesforce Testing and When To Use Them
Copado + DataColada: Enabling CI/CD for Developers Across APAC
What is Salesforce API Testing and It Why Should Be Automated
Machine Learning Models: Adapting Data Patterns With Copado For AI Test Automation
Automated Testing Benefits: The Case For As Little Manual Testing As Possible
Beyond Selenium: Low Code Testing To Maximize Speed and Quality
UI Testing Best Practices: From Implementation to Automation
How Agile Test Automation Helps You Develop Better and Faster
Salesforce Test Cases: Knowing When to Test
DevOps Quality Assurance: Major Pitfalls and Challenges
11 Characteristics of Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) That Set Them Apart
7 Key Compliance Regulations Relating to Data Storage
7 Ways Digital Transformation Consulting Revolutionizes Your Business
6 Top Cloud Security Trends
API Management Best Practices
Applying a Zero Trust Infrastructure in Kubernetes
Building a Data Pipeline Architecture Based on Best Practices Brings the Biggest Rewards
Go back to resources
There is no previous posts
Go back to resources
There is no next posts

Activate AI — Accelerate DevOps

Release Faster, Eliminate Risk, and Enjoy Your Work.
Try Copado Devops.

Resources

Level up your Salesforce DevOps skills with our resource library.

Upcoming Events & Webinars

Explore Events

E-Books and Whitepapers

Read and Learn

Support and Documentation

Documentation Home

Demo Library

Watch Demos Now