My pledge for Safer Internet Day

I was asked to write a pledge to help promote the importance of Safer Internet Day, which is taking place February 8.

If you are not familiar with Safer Internet Day, it is a day dedicated to highlighting practical ways in which you can be involved in creating and maintaining a better online world. You can read more about it here.

I took on this task and actually came up with two pledges: a personal and business one.

As a mother of a newly-minted teenage daughter—who now has access to her own cellphone—and an almost 10-year-old son—who will likely have access to his own cellphone in a few years’ time—I feel significant pressure and responsibility as a parent to ensure that I am teaching and demonstrating safe internet practices to my children.

There are so many great resources out there that parents can turn to for help with this, but I think the most important aspect parents should be focusing on is to be cognizant of where their children are spending their time online and to demonstrate healthy online habits for them.

So I wanted my personal pledge to reflect this desire:

To honor Safer Internet Day, the mission to make the internet a safer place for us and future generations, I pledge to do my part by being a role model for my children and demonstrating healthy habits in the way I use and engage with social media and other online platforms and applications.

It is so easy to get caught mindlessly scrolling through various social feeds on our phones or tablets and neglecting the people around us. I’m ashamed to admit that I have been called out on this a few times by my children. If parents are exhibiting this kind of thoughtless behavior in front of our children, what right do we have to be upset when they do the same thing to us? Or to their friends or family members?

Time to talk risk

As a mother, Safer Internet Day isn’t just being “safe” while online, but is also about being smart and intentional with when to be online. Social media and online gaming shouldn’t be used as an escape or a means to avoid spending quality time with loved ones. Our online habits shouldn’t be at the expense of our IRL relationships. But the allure and the addictive nature that many social platforms and online games inherently have can easily cause us to regress.

And to help celebrate Safer Internet Day from a business perspective, my professional pledge is:

To honor Safer Internet Day, the mission to make the internet a safer place for us and future generations, I pledge to do my part by teaching MSPs how to have those necessary risk conversations with their customers in order to help improve the overall security awareness and mindset of their employees.

It is not my intention to equate your customers and their employees to children. But as an organization’s MSP, and the one who is wholly responsible for the ongoing safety and security of their network, like a parent, you too need to be mindful of how “security aware” your customers are. You will need to take on that parental-like task of ensuring that all proper cybersecurity hygiene measures have been implemented to protect your customers’ businesses and livelihoods as their employees go about using the internet to do their daily tasks.

This means:

1. Having those difficult conversations with your customers if you know there are gaps or holes when it comes to their network security

Your customers already expect you are doing whatever you can to protect them and have implemented all the necessary security measures to prevent a breach from happening. So if that is not the case, and you know that isn’t the case, you need to schedule an executive business review meeting with those impacted customers to explain the “real” situation. You don’t need to sell fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) here but you do need to explain that they are not as secure as they believe. From here, you need to outline your plan to rectify that.

2. Designing specialized cybersecurity programs, keeping the end user in mind

I liken this to thinking of your employees as priceless, antique china dishes that need to be bubble-wrapped to avoid chips or breakage. That is how you need to think of designing your cybersecurity programs—what do I need to include in my security programs that will help protect employees from themselves? According to a Verizon 2021 Data Breach Investigations report, 85% of breaches involved a human element. Left unchecked, end users are the real cybersecurity threat facing businesses today, and the bad guys know and exploit it. So if you haven’t had the opportunity to redesign your programs to have more of a cybersecurity focus, then 2022 is the perfect time to do so.

3. Including mandatory cybersecurity training for all employees as part of your cybersecurity programs

Implementing a new suite of security software across your customer base to address the new threats that are emerging is a necessity, but ensuring you are also incorporating a human element into your security programs that includes end-user security training is just as imperative. Being able to recognize phishing attempts and malicious emails, and how to surf the web safely and securely will provide that extra level of protection beyond what technology alone can offer.

And if your customers are pushing back on your changes, then you need to be the role model and clarify the necessity around why proper security measures are needed. Like a parent, you want to be looking out for their best interests and the best interests of their organization. No one wants to suffer through a ransomware attack or a breach because of insufficient security measures that were left in place.

So what are you doing to commemorate Safer Internet Day within your MSP?

If you are looking for guidance on how to have those difficult conversations with your customers, then be sure to check out my Boot Camp, “The Guide to Building and Selling Security Programs.” Partners can access this through the 0n-demand section of N‑able U.  In this I provide several examples you can leverage on how to respond to customers and prospects if they object to your attempt to implement a new program meant to help improve their security posture and mitigate their business risk. Like children, customers don’t always know what is best for them, but with proper guidance, open and honest communication, and being a good role model, we can help them understand we have their best interests at heart.

Stefanie Hammond is head sales and marketing nerd at N‑able. You can follow her on LinkedIn and on Twitter at @sales_mktg_nerd.