Ondrej Safar, CEZ Romania: “Cybersecurity is very important; we need to constantly train our employees and change their mentality”

“Five years ago, cyber security was a subject only for the IT department. The situation has changed, and cyber security is now a very important topic for the entire company. Two years ago, we started a learning process for employees. This journey started with the learning part, and the next step was to test the employees. We started sending “dangerous” emails to employees to test their reactions,” Ondrej Safar, Country Manager CEZ Romania, said during Cybersecurity in Energy Forum.

“Surprisingly, the results were very poor. More than 80% of the employees failed the test with the email telling them that they would get free Netflix if they clicked on a certain link.

It was the pandemic period and people were very upset that the email was not real, and everything was just a test.

Later, we linked the cyber security part to KPIs, and each employee was also evaluated for their behavior from this perspective.

It was a complicated process in which we had to explain to the employees that every click can be dangerous and that it can mean the beginning of a disaster.

The situation has improved, we still have work to do, but our goal is to change the mentality of every employee, and for every employee to know that cyber security is very important for the company.”