Over the past years, cyberattacks have become more frequent and sophisticated. Businesses face a wide variety of threats, including ransomware, phishing schemes, and even threats from nation states and rival businesses. It’s more important than ever for businesses and individuals to understand those threats and how to defend against them. Operational security (OPSEC) training is a critical step in educating your team and protecting your organization from attack.
An Overview of OPSEC and OPSEC Training
What is OPSEC?
OPSEC, or operational security, is the systematic process of keeping sensitive information from being accessed by bad actors. OPSEC originated in the military, but it has since been adopted by many other fields, including cybersecurity. In the cybersecurity sector, OPSEC focuses on preventing data breaches, theft of intellectual property, and unauthorized access to systems and networks.
What is OPSEC training?
OPSEC training is designed to teach security professionals, as well as other non technical individuals, to protect sensitive information in a digital environment. The goal of OPSEC training is to minimize cyber risks by teaching the learners to identify potential vulnerabilities, recognize threats, and implement countermeasures to prevent data leaks and cyberattacks.
What are the five steps of OPSEC?
There are five steps to the OPSEC process:
- Identification of critical information: Determine which information is sensitive and needs to be protected.
- Analysis of threats: Identify any potential adversaries who might target your sensitive data.
- Analysis of vulnerabilities: Find weak points in your system or network that threat actors might use to access your information.
- Assessment of risks: Use the above information to determine the level of risk faced by your organization.
- Application of appropriate countermeasures: Develop security measures to mitigate risk.
Who needs OPSEC training?
While it’s important for IT security professionals to have OPSEC training, it’s not just for your security team. Anyone with access to sensitive information should have at least some basic OPSEC training; they should know which information is sensitive and how potential threat actors might try to access it.
Why is OPSEC Training Especially Important Now?
Why should professionals seek out OPSEC training now?
Businesses face a growing number of cyberthreats. Due to the increasing complexity of cyber threats, changing geopolitical tensions, and organizations’ growing external threat exposures, it’s important for everyone in an organization to understand cyber risk and know how to mitigate it. Making an OPSEC mistake could have huge consequences for your data and your business.
What are some examples of OPSEC mistakes?
An OPSEC mistake is any action that doesn’t protect sensitive information and which could lead to a potential security breach. Some OPSEC mistakes apply to security teams but several of can be made by anyone in an organization, and don’t even have to happen in a digital environment:
- Oversharing online, or posting sensitive business information on social media
- Talking about confidential work information with someone who doesn’t have authorization
- Weak or reused passwords
- Clicking on malicious links in phishing messages
- Leaving sensitive information in plain view
- Using personal devices to access business networks
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What is the impact of an OPSEC mistake?
An OPSEC mistake can have many consequences for an organization, both financial and reputational:
- Disruption of operations: Some threats, like ransomware attacks, may lock an organization out of its own data and systems, disrupting business operations.
- Financial cost: Aside from any financial information or resources stolen during an attack, the organization may face the cost of interrupted work, fines, and expenses associated with remediation.
- Loss of proprietary or sensitive data: Attackers steal and take advantage of sensitive data, including personal information, intellectual property, and trade secrets. This data can be used for various malicious purposes, such as identity theft, industrial espionage, or future targeted attacks against the organization or its users.
- Reputational loss: A data breach can damage the reputation of an organization. Customers may lose trust in the company’s ability to protect their data and negative press may impact the public perception of a company.
- Legal consequences and costs: Organizations that fail to protect user data often face legal and regulatory penalties. Data breach notification laws require companies to inform affected users and, in some cases, government agencies about security incidents. Additionally, organizations may be held liable for damages resulting from inadequate security measures, leading to potential lawsuits and fines.
How does Flare help with OPSEC training?
Does Flare offer OPSEC training?
Yes. Flare’s new online cybersecurity training series, Flare Academy, offers free cybersecurity webinars covering a variety of topics that are of interest to cybersecurity practitioners — this includes OPSEC training. Flare also provides a Flare Academy Discord Community where security professionals can meet, share information and resources, and discuss security issues with the experts who have appeared in the webinars. Recently we covered OPSEC fundamentals, which is available to watch in the Discord community.
Who can attend Flare’s training sessions?
Everyone is welcome, although some training sessions are designed with specific audiences in mind. For example, some webinars will be most useful for security professionals. However, because some topics are of interest to a wider audience, anyone is welcome to join those seminars. To help you better understand whether a webinar is a good fit for you, we label each training session with prerequisites and a level of expertise: beginner, intermediate, or advanced.
What do you get with Flare’s free OPSEC training?
- High-value training from cybersecurity experts
- Interactive learning with peers
- Actionable cybersecurity insights
- CPE credits toward security certifications
- A resource hub and learning community on Discord
What if I miss a live training session?
Flare Academy offers webinars live, but replays are available on our Discord community. The Discord is an invaluable resource for learners; not only are all our past webinars available there, but the Discord also provides additional learning material, access to the experts who spoke in each webinar, and discussion and networking opportunities with other participants. It’s a cybersecurity learning community.
OPSEC training and Flare
Flare Academy, an ongoing series of free cybersecurity training sessions, led by experts, recently covered operational security. The session explored OPSEC principles and demonstrated actionable steps to minimize exposures and maximize privacy. Available completely for free in an on-demand format, this two-hour training session offers an invaluable introduction to operational security for anyone invested in security, privacy, and corporate governance.
Join the Flare Academy Discord Community to check out the resources from the OPSEC training.
