Campaign Showcase: NCSC, Cyber Aware

A time of increased risk?

Festive seasons are a time of heightened risk for online fraud, as cybercriminals prey on consumers when they go shopping online. According to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB), the average individual loss in an online fraud over Christmas, for example, is ￡725.

Protecting online consumers

In response to this, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) led a cross-government effort to deliver a focused burst of Cyber Aware activity.

It was designed to drive behaviour changes that would protect consumers doing their Christmas shopping online. The Cyber Aware campaign narrowed its focus from encouraging uptake of six protective cyber behaviours to just two – centred on email protection: creating a strong and separate password using three random words, and switching on two-step verification. Additionally, the activity aimed to drive increased reports of scams across websites, emails and texts.

The strategy was centred on leveraging moments of heightened online shopping (such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday) to reach the target audience with consistent, actionable messages, amplified through trusted and relevant private and public sector partners.?

The NCSC created bespoke social assets and worked with partners to amplify them at these times of heightened internet usage (example of campaign imagery pictured below)?

Taking action?

There were over 15 million impressions across social media. A third of the audience saw at least one of the campaign assets, and 48% of those who had said they took action or changed their behaviour to improve their cyber security, such as strengthening their passwords or using two-step verification. This comes to 13% of all UK adults when non-recognisers were included.

What can we learn from this campaign??

Pippa H, Head of Strategic Communications and Marketing at the NCSC, said:

?“Our email is like the front door to our digital life. It’s where we keep personal and financial information, and we increasingly use it to log in to other services. This was the first outing of Cyber Aware which sharpened the focus to two, email-protecting behaviours – following evaluation of 20/21 activity.

This short campaign burst was a useful testbed to put those learnings into action - ahead of a significantly higher investment campaign which launched in March. The results helped refine the new strategic approach and indicated that the new campaign would drive the same intended behaviour changes.”

This activity forms part of ongoing Cyber Aware campaigning throughout the year. The learnings from this burst were used to inform the next major burst, which launched earlier this month across broadcast and digital radio, over 2000 digital billboards across the UK, and social media. You can access campaign assets. You can follow the campaign on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn?

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