In order to measure the effectiveness of your cybersecurity efforts, one of the key metrics to look at is the false negative rate or the amount of genuine threat activity that erroneously goes unflagged as suspicious. It can be incredibly difficult to measure the false negative rate, as false negatives are, by definition undetected threats.

Reducing false negative rates requires fortifying your threat detection and response measures. Human beings can be an organization’s strongest line of defense against cyberthreats, and an effective security training program is a core pillar of equipping your employees to reduce false negative rates and protect your resources and assets against a wide range of threats.

Dangers of High False Negative Rates

Unlike a false positive, which incorrectly flags innocuous activity as risky behavior, a false negative allows a real threat to go undetected. This can lead to a higher incidence of successful cyberattacks and all of the consequences that come with them. A good false negative rate is below 1%, and organizations can use metrics on their false negative rates in order to adjust and improve their security posture.

Failing to minimize the false negative rate carries a number of risks to your organization, including:

• Data Breaches and Leaks: Organizations are at risk of losing sensitive data to cybercriminals attempting to steal, corrupt, or destroy it.
• Threats to Intellectual Property: Proprietary information like copyrighted material can be threatened when suspicious behavior goes undetected.
• Vulnerability to Attacks: Cyberthreats like ransomware and other malware infiltration can easily occur if incident detection returns many false negatives.
• Consequences of Regulatory Noncompliance: An insufficient threat detection and response strategy can lead to regulatory repercussions if security measures do not align with compliance guidelines.
• Financial Losses: The financial cost of investigating, containing, and remediating a successful attack far outweighs the price and effort of threat detection and prevention.
• Loss of Reputation: Organizations may lose standing, competitive edge, and esteem among customers, partners, and industry peers if threat detection is not able to prevent attacks.

Importance of Effective Security Training

Employees play a major part in protecting any organization against attacks and other cybersecurity incidents. An effective security training program is essential in preparing your organization’s employees to detect threats and prevent false negatives. While technological and automated security tools are also a necessary part of detecting and preventing attacks, the human users in your organization have the potential to be a great asset in reducing false negatives and protecting against attacks.

It is necessary to ensure that your training is effective in equipping employees to understand and fulfill their role in the security posture of the whole organization. Security is everyone’s responsibility, and a good training program enables your employees to fill in the security gaps of your technological solutions and reduce the rate of false negatives.

Many attacks are more difficult to contain and prevent without the help of the human firewall. Effective training is vital to equip employees to:

• Recognize and prevent phishing attempts and other social engineering attacks.
• Understand incident response
• Use effective email hygiene and cybersecurity best practices.
• Implement correct security settings and configurations.

Designing a Training Program to Reduce False Negatives

In order to minimize your organization’s false negative rates, it is vital to develop an effective training program to improve incident detection and response operations. Key factors in designing a training program include the following steps:

• Obtaining buy-in from organization executives to ensure the program receives the funding and other resources necessary to establish effective training.
• Performing risk assessments to discover which areas of the organization’s security need the most focus, which resources are most vulnerable to attack, and which parts of training must be prioritized in the program.
• Informing employees of the importance of their personal part in ensuring the organization’s cybersecurity, preparing them to be fully invested and engaged in the training, rather than simply treating it as a requirement to get out of the way and forget about.
• Establishing training that explores the vital areas of security with tactics like gamification, audiovisual aids, and assessments to gauge users’ understanding of the material.
• Measuring the effectiveness of your organization’s security training and other security measures by evaluating key metrics like false negative rates and response times.
• Regularly updating training to refresh users on important information and update course material to keep up with security trends and the digital landscape.

Conclusion

Reducing false negatives demands enhanced incident detection and response methods, and security training is one of the most important parts of any effective security strategy. Employees, especially those in security and IT, must be equipped to fill in the gaps in security, protecting against many catastrophic threats that can slip by other security measures and methods.

Building an effective security training program can prepare your organization’s employees to detect threats that might otherwise go undetected, helping to reduce false negative rates and protect against a variety of cyber risks.

About the author:
PJ Bradley is a writer on a wide variety of topics, passionate about learning and helping people above all else. Holding a bachelor’s degree from Oakland University, PJ enjoys using a lifelong desire to understand how things work to write about subjects that inspire interest. Most of PJ’s free time is spent reading and writing. PJ is also a regular writer at Bora.