SoSafe: because IT security is a question of awareness.

In this article, we would like to give you an insight into the work of hackers, but above all into security awareness. ... Into the what? Security awareness. A term used to describe the awareness of threats and security in networks and which, in most contexts, also means wanting to sensitise employees specifically to information and IT security. With this in mind, we would also like to introduce you to our partner company SoSafe, which is completely dedicated to the topic of security awareness and offers professional employee training for companies on this topic.

Humans are creatures that miraculously combine genius and madness - and to this day seem to trip themselves up with every step forward. If we look at the history of mankind, most great inventions have enormous and significant advantages as well as serious disadvantages (usually not included from the outset). This also applies to the omniscient Internet and the devices that come with it, such as the all-powerful smartphone. As completely indispensable and vital, these things have insinuated themselves into our lives without being asked - and have come to stay.

More than half of the world's population (i.e. more than 4 billion people) now have their personal and company data online, and the trend is rising. So it's no wonder that someone has come up with the idea of capitalising on this.

Even before the Internet was ascribed so much power by all of us, exposés and articles such as John Perry Barlow's 1996 "Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace" and Loyd Blankenship's 1986 "Hacker Manifesto" appeared, illustrating the vision of a self-governing Internet and addressing the opportunities and dangers of exercising power and waging war online, as well as personal property, individuality and context.

So, from the outset, humans have factored in that the internet could become more powerful than powerful, while others have always maintained that this is just a passing, useless trend. Surprise: It is not.

The fact that almost anyone can publish almost completely arbitrary content on the Internet and thus make it accessible to billions of people makes it significantly more difficult for us to distinguish trustworthy from untrustworthy information and content on a daily basis.

This dilemma, however, suits hackers just fine, as it means they can lure and manipulate you with information and content that appears trustworthy to you. And we are already in the middle of the danger zone - and confronted with the need for security awareness training.

The Cologne-based company SoSafe motivates other companies to build a human firewall. People should no longer be seen as a weak point in IT security, but as a valuable asset that can play a key role in the security of the entire company through education and training and prevent hacker attacks in everyday working life.

SoSafe provides a user-friendly, state-of-the-art and fully automated platform for this purpose, which offers effective, psychologically sound cyber security awareness training that enables employees to learn sustainable secure behaviour. The SoSafe security awareness training courses are designed to be interactive and motivating and thus playfully increase the security awareness of the respective employees. Compliance regulations are also ticked off along the way.

"As a German and European provider, we take personal data protection very seriously. We are the only international security awareness platform provider that is fully GDPR-compliant and follows a privacy-by-design approach. You decide whether e-learning and phishing simulations should be conducted anonymously or tracked and analysed individually - or whether you prefer a mixture of both. Whatever you choose, we make sure that you fulfil all compliance requirements at all times and that your data is always protected." (SoSafe website) Statistics clearly show that cyber attacks are already part of our everyday lives, and will continue to be so in the future - and that hackers will not disappear as quickly as we once hoped. Cyber criminals are also becoming increasingly skilful and their attacks more complex, and conventional cyber security training cannot keep pace with this development. This is why SoSafe is striving for a sustainable and targeted change in behaviour with regard to IT security in companies.

Some people are now thinking "Oh, my company is far too small for an attack anyway" - no, it's not. It really isn't.

IT security is the new fire protection - all companies need to protect themselves and ideally also take out cyber insurance. Small and medium-sized companies in particular justifiably fear hacker attacks more than almost any other risk, because unlike large corporations, they are usually unable to bear the damage caused - and are not as well prepared for attacks as large companies due to the financial and time expenditure involved.

But none of this helps, because the question is not whether there will be an attack on your company, but when and in what form. Most hacker attacks occur due to the following (human) vulnerabilities:

- Poorly selected and repeatedly used passwords

- Data protection and privacy settings at a minimal level

- Outdated protection programmes and software

- The fatal click on an unknown email attachment, a fake page, an unknown message... (Phising!)

- Downloading files of unknown origin

- Unsecured WLAN or other network

Phising is still the most successful and therefore most widespread tactic for gaining access to a third-party IT infrastructure. This makes it all the more important to professionally sensitise employees to unknown content and to deal with the topic of cyber security in the same way that hackers do.

So far. So good.

Just one more thing: we can never protect ourselves 100% against hacker attacks. Just as we can't protect ourselves 100% against burglary or disease.

However, to lift our spirits: we can protect ourselves as best we can against hacker attacks, just as we can against burglary and disease.

For this reason, countless organisations around the world rely on SoSafe to increase the awareness of their employees and minimise human security risks. We at suresecure GmbH also rely on our cyber security partner SoSafe when it comes to security awareness. For us and for other companies.

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