It is a myth that employees hate training and education. I have seen it with my own eyes. It is very exciting to watch an audience visibly cover their mouths when real life stories are told about cyber-attacks and phishing incidents that employees’ conduct cause because they are working too fast, not paying attention to detail and just plain don’t know much about the risks of technology.

I am constantly amazed the number of people of all ages who have no idea about the risks posed by the use of technology, and how they can put themselves and their companies at risk by one click.

Arming employees with tools to protect your digital perimeter gives them a sense of purpose and pride. In my experience, employees do not want to be the one who clicks on the link that introduces malware or ransomware into the company system. I have never seen a victim who has enabled an infiltrater into the system feel anything except horror. Employees in general really do want to do a good job for their company and do not want to harm it.

That’s why employee training and education in data privacy and security continues to be so important as a mitigating factor to the risk of cyber intrusions. According to a survey of cybersecurity professionals in financial firms, in their opinion, employee education and training on data privacy and security is the best defense against cyber-attacks—over network security breach prevention, or securing the cloud. This is because “[P]rotective measures on a firm’s computer system can still fail if a worker click on a link or downloads an email attachment carrying malicious code.” So true.

Employees don’t understand the risks until you show them and tell them real stories that they can relate to, learn from and not replicate. Face to face training works wonders for increasing the culture around data privacy and security and empowers employees to assist companies in promoting practices to protect data. Try it—you will be surprised at how engaged your employees can be when they are part of fixing the problem.