How can you make security awareness easy?

In my experience, start with the why before you go into the what and how. Too often it’s a compliance exercise with no real benefit or outcome. Why do we need to make someone aware/ educated? What are we trying to achieve and why is it important and to do now? How does this help the individual, group or organization with their mission? How will you and they know when you’re ‘there’? Then you’ll find the right frameworks to support the program

Security awareness is not one time activity. It's a mindset or a habit cultivated within which will eventually become permanant over period of time and one will become security aware by default without being think of it. One should think it as a standard of living and not as burden. Which will make it easily approachable and become part of your daily life.

All industry frameworks, standards and or guidelines have security awareness requirements, but are not organization specifics, so regardless of your framework of choice, do the following: - Clearly define - Why is this critical? - Clearly define - What's the goal and What is important for the business and consequences.. - Clearly define - How progress and improvements are going to be measured (KPIs/KRIs). - Make it personal for all - security starts with individuals. - Design the program to be engaging, use multiple channels, easy to understand, supported with real world stories and scenarios that may likely happen. - keep all informed on latest industry trends in terms of incidents and attack techniques.

Simplify, Automate, Engage! ????? I'd simplify security awareness by adopting a comprehensive framework like NIST to structure our approach. Automate training reminders and phishing simulations to maintain consistent engagement. Incorporate fun elements, like gamification and competitions, to increase participation. Integrate security practices into daily routines, making them second nature. Regularly seek feedback to identify areas for improvement and adjust strategies to meet the organization's evolving needs.

Start thinking ahead. Many organizations start small, often by running an awareness program with 10% FTE or even less. Over time, we see the needs and demands of security awareness programs outgrowing what an organization can deliver themselves. Start building your internal team at the right moment. Also start thinking about shaping security culture from the start. Use a maturity framework to determine your status quo and to identify next steps.

Many organisations have very manual security awareness processes, for example giving weekly live trainings or crafting and sending their own phishing simulations. Unfortunately, security awareness teams are usually teams of... 1 person! You should strive to automate your work as much as possible, relying on technological tools (Power Automate, AI, security awareness vendors proposing automated and individual learning paths...), so that you can focus instead on what cannot be automated, such as understanding the pain points of your employees when it comes to security, or building relationships with senior stakeholders in the organisation.

AI can personalize the experience to each user while managing your entire program for you and deploying best practices. We all learn differently and each one of us are susceptible to different types of attacks. This is why it's so critical to bring AI to your awareness program. PhishFirewall's AI Lora does all the work for you and gets results that are 10x better than anything else in the market.

Automation in security awareness is a game-changer. By automating tasks like software updates and vulnerability scanning, you reduce the risk of human error and free up time for more strategic activities. Tools that deliver personalized training content can further enhance learning efficiency. What automation tools have you found most effective in your security awareness program?

Ab einer gewissen Unternehmensgr??e bleibt Automatisierung nicht mehr aus. Allerdings sollte die Automatisierung stets durch Individualisierung angepasst werden. Automatisiere pro Bereich. Identifiziere Bereiche im Unternehmen, die ?hnliche Herausforderungen haben und automatisiere dafür. Erg?nze die Automatisierung allerdings stets, um pers?nliche Workshops mit Abteilungen oder Bereichen, sodass pers?nliche Fragen und Herausforderungen mit einem Experten besprochen werden k?nnen. So schaffst du zudem eine M?glichkeit für Feedback und erh?hst die Motivation.

Below are some keypoints to make security awarness easy 1.Regular communication to employees relates to current security public issues with the interesting topics. 2.Simulate attacks 3.Measure the success rate of ur previous awarness training. 4.Use of posters & flyers/screensavers. 5.Rewarding good behavior.

Our infosec team created a little chatbot called “Captain Compliance” that sits within our main comms channel and every now and then sends us little quizzes. Gives you a score and some gifs and makes it engaging. And to top it all off when I do well it calls me “SuperSyd”. A simple, fun and engaging way to do it.

Making security awareness fun and engaging is crucial to ensure that people are not only informed but also motivated to adopt secure behaviors. For instance, in a recent security awareness campaign within my organization, we introduced a gamified training platform where employees could earn points and rewards by completing security challenges and quizzes. Additionally, we organized themed events such as "Cybersecurity Awareness Week" where we hosted interactive workshops, escape room challenges, and even a cybersecurity-themed movie night. By infusing elements of fun and creativity into our security awareness initiatives, we saw increased participation and enthusiasm among employees, ultimately leading to a more security-conscious culture.

Use regular language to introduce concepts and then supply the security-equivalent language as a way to differentiate the types of - say fraud - and the way they're delivered. Social engineering is such a hot topic right now that it can be the overarching theme. My October content will center around fraud and computers. Content must be relevant, helpful, engaging, and quick to consume. Real examples. Why they matter.

Security Awareness should be integral part of organization culture. Having it just for name sake or "compliance" sake isn't going to work. More often, people tend to rush to complete the awareness trainings by any means possible and look at it as an overhead. Security Awareness should always be fun and engaging activity which everyone should enjoy and learn from. Also it should be practical in day to day context. For example, send simulated Phishing emails to employees, have them spot the culprit and report it correctly.

Meet your audience where they are not where you want to be. If your audience likes social media, memes, Infographics, leverage that style of communication to connect and engage. Remember it’s not about you. It’s about getting to the desired outcome.

In my experience, establishing simple yet impactful habits can significantly enhance security posture. For example, as part of our organization's security awareness program, we encouraged employees to incorporate brief security checkpoints into their daily routines, such as performing a quick review of email sender addresses before clicking on links or attachments. Additionally, we provided tips on setting up automatic backups for important data and scheduling regular software updates during non-working hours. By embedding security practices into everyday habits, we cultivated a culture of vigilance and proactive risk mitigation across the organization.

To elaborate on this in the retail context, the awareness itself must fit into our teams' routines. We can't simply take team off the floor to learn. Start thinking about how your awareness campaigns fit into the floor teams day to day, even your knowledge workers day to day. The best awareness is learned through exposure.

By understanding that security is everyone′s responsibility, every single activity in a day has a security component. Get to know each of them, little by little, some examples are: - using your idcard (physical security), or taking care of the physical assets (computer, hard drives, etc). - by non revealing your salary, and other sensitive information (privacy) - protecting internal information, credit card numbers, login and passwords (confidentiality) - shutting down things that you don't use anymore (shadow IT, legacy systems, inventory management). - creating good, fast, reliable and secure processes, software and systems. - by reviewing providers compliance and their own security.

Security awareness needs to be continuous and that means continuous phishing simulations with just in time training. This helps to make security second nature.

Continuous feedback and improvement are key to maintaining effective security awareness. Regularly measuring your progress and adapting to new threats keeps your strategy relevant. Utilizing metrics and surveys can highlight areas for growth and development. How do you collect feedback and assess the effectiveness of your security awareness program?

As creators, use agile mindset to create content, deliver it to your users, get the feedback from the user, improve it and release it again. As a user, ask questions to a LLM bot that has policies and can help you out to solve philosophical situations. As a user you can become an influencer / champion helping the security team to spread the word.

To make awareness training as effective as possible, multiple methods of delivering valuable content must be used. Automated systems and computer based training has it's place, but running workshops, webinars and in-person training make it more personal. If you can offer an element of personal assistance i.e. answer questions on challenges people have with cyber security at home, you're more likely to have an engaged audience that's willing to learn and turn themselves into fellow skeptics with an attitude of 'zero-trust'. They get something for free by showing an interest. Helping employees to improve their cyber security at home also has a net benefit of improving the awareness culture at work, so there's mutual benefit for all.

Recognizing that security awareness is not a static state but a dynamic and evolving one is crucial in today's ever-changing cyber landscape. Facilitate collaboration among employees by organizing workshops, forums, or events where they can share insights, experiences, and best practices related to security awareness. This collaborative environment fosters a sense of collective responsibility for cybersecurity.

It's essential to foster a supportive and inclusive environment where individuals feel empowered to engage in security awareness efforts. For instance, organizing peer-to-peer mentoring sessions or establishing online discussion forums can facilitate knowledge sharing and collaboration among colleagues with varying levels of expertise. Furthermore, leveraging feedback mechanisms such as suggestion boxes or anonymous surveys can provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of security awareness initiatives and identify areas for improvement. By fostering a culture of continuous learning and open communication, organizations can strengthen their overall security posture and adapt to evolving threats more effectively.

Additionally, ROI of security awareness efforts should be explored, where possible. Most organizations do it as a regulatory compliance obligation however security awareness should eventually be measured in terms of KPIs/KRIs ... Over a period of time, it should reflect in measurable metrics such as reduction in click ratio for phishing emails or security incidents , increase in # of security incident reporting and so on.

1) look at the calendar and find logical touchpoints for awareness content through the year (eg preparedness month) 2) find partners and SMEs within your org who want to be part of the security awareness program. For example, your physical security team may have important messaging about the importance of using employee ID badges. Lean into these interested folks. 3) Embrace micro learning. Infographics. Memes. Short form videos are all low effort ways to have real impact and are easily shared across geographies and platforms.

Incorporate what people are curious about and what they care to learn. Stories of cybercrime and the details regarding it are usually engaging. Current events explained in English are, too. Now, if the crime stories and the current events also relate to your industry, imagine how much more engaging they become. Finally, events your company has experienced - especially if they were stopped from being incidents - also gold. Use what you have - work with human nature. Build conversations atop your baseline cybersecurity awareness program.

Passwords, after password and data encryption, firewalls all the technical jumble to keep the data secure is a necessity. But most people are not able to comprehend their importance, since they have to remember passwords for each system and machine.... which IT will force to change from time to time as well in most cases. Hence people try to compromise it as they have the fear of forgetting passwords.. Keeping all of them same.(security risk). Writing them openly etc. The thing which should be ingrained is that all the security measures are for their own data security. That needs to build a mindset within the organization where individuals realize the importance of it and participate in keeping the system safe.