Cyber Security Training for the Average User
Written By: Frank Saulsbery
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A SNEAK PEEK…
“It doesn’t need to be complicated, sometimes a single hour of practical, real-world guidance can prevent the kind of mistake that keeps you up at night.”
An employee forwards you an email and says, “This looked a little odd, but I wasn’t sure.” Or worse, nobody tells you anything and you find out later someone clicked a link, entered a password, or responded to a message they shouldn’t have.
And now you’re wondering, “Should my team be trained for this stuff? Or is this just part of doing business now?” It’s a fair concern. Most business owners don’t expect their front office staff, accounting team, or operations people to become cybersecurity experts. That’s not what they were hired for.
But at the same time, you’re trusting those same employees with access to your systems, your data, and in many cases, your money, so the concern is real.
Here’s the truth most people don’t realize right away. The majority of cybersecurity problems don’t start with some complex technical attack. They start with a simple human moment, someone clicks a link, someone trusts an email, someone tries to be helpful and responds too quickly. That’s why we often call our employee training “building a human firewall.”
The idea is not to turn your employees into IT professionals. It’s to help them recognize the kinds of situations where things don’t feel quite right and slow down before acting. And the good news is, this kind of training is not complicated or time consuming.
Most sessions take about 45 minutes to an hour, it’s focused, practical, and always very relatable. You’re not walking through technical settings or behind-the-scenes systems. You’re talking about the everyday decisions people make while doing their jobs, things like email.
What should you do when you get a message with a link you didn’t expect? What about an attachment from someone you don’t recognize? Or an email that looks like it’s from the owner asking you to quickly buy gift cards? That last one gets more people than you would think.
We also talk about habits people don’t always think are risky. Checking personal email on a work computer, for example. It feels harmless, but it can open the door to problems you didn’t plan for. Then there are situations involving money.
If a vendor emails and says, “We’ve updated our banking information,” what’s the right move? The correct answer isn’t to reply to the email. It’s to pick up the phone and confirm it with someone you already trust at that company. That one step alone has saved businesses from some very expensive mistakes.
Social media comes up too. Not in a restrictive way, but in a practical way. What’s okay to share? What might unintentionally give someone too much information about your business and how to determine if it will?
And more recently, conversations around AI have started showing up. It’s powerful and useful, but employees need to understand that putting sensitive business information into AI tools can carry risks if they’re not careful. When you look at it all together, the training isn’t about technology, it’s about awareness. It helps your team understand the small decisions they make every day that affect your business’s security, often without them realizing it.
Now, let’s be honest about something, not every business needs formal, ongoing training programs right away. If you have a very small team and strong oversight, simple conversations and reminders can go a long way.
But as soon as you have multiple employees handling email, payments, or customer data, the risk changes. Not because your people aren’t smart, but because they’re busy. And busy people are exactly who these scams are designed to target.
That’s why even a basic training session can make a big difference. It gives your team confidence and gives them permission to question things. And maybe most importantly, it helps them feel comfortable saying, “Hey, this doesn’t look right,” instead of just moving forward.
At the end of the day, you’re not trying to eliminate every possible risk, that’s not realistic. You’re just trying to reduce the chances that a simple mistake turns into a big problem.
So here’s a simple question to think about, if one of your employees received a suspicious email this afternoon, would they know what to do, or would they just do their best and hope it’s fine? If you’re not completely sure, it might be worth having that conversation with your team.
It doesn’t need to be complicated, sometimes a single hour of practical, real-world guidance can prevent the kind of mistake that keeps you up at night.
That’s how I see it, anyway, and I’d enjoy hearing how you see it. None of this is a sales pitch. It’s just the kind of thing I’d talk through with you if we were sitting across the table. If it raised a question, or you think I have it wrong, I want to hear about it.
My door is always open. Whether you want to talk this through or just say hello, you can reach me anytime.
Network Solutions Unlimited is a generational managed IT services provider based in Decatur, Illinois, serving businesses and nonprofits with genuine support and decades of trusted relationships. Led by Baily Saulsbery and founded by her father Frank, we're not just your IT provider; we're your neighbors who happen to be really good at technology. Contact us today to experience IT support that actually cares.
