July 2019 AST Magazine AST July 2019 Magazine

look 35 for R www.AmericanSecurityToday.com emember the old adage “if you see Teach all agency employees July 2019 - to Edition something, say something”? It applies warning signs and share information just as much in the federal IT space as it immediately whenever they notice what might be a red flag, no matter how innoc- does anywhere else. uous it may seem. Maintaining good security must be It’s always better to err on the side of cau- everyone’s responsibility, not just a tion, rather than pay a hefty price later. select few. Focus on continuous training and It is incumbent upon CIOs and security education managers to instill a culture of informa- tion sharing among their colleagues no A recent SolarWinds survey of feder- matter what position they hold. al IT professionals found that 43 per- cent of respondents felt that inadequate user training was a barrier to system op- timization. That’s problematic for a number of rea- sons. First, the less training a person receives, the more likely they may be to make a mis- take—and mistakes can lead to the unin- tentional dissemina- tion of critical infor- mation or allowing hackers (via things 46

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