People have always been considered the biggest vulnerability to any organizations security mechanisms. Lack of awareness or choosing to engage in risky behavior means employees can be duped into phishing scams, download malicious applications, create poor passwords or do other things that endanger sensitive data. That is why security awareness training is a critical component of security that helps to explain employees potential threats and security measures.
However, not all awareness training programs are created equal. It is crucial to avoid certain mistakes which can hinder the effectiveness or even have negative effects on the program. Avoid these key errors when developing and implementing your security awareness training:Avoid these key errors when developing and implementing your security awareness training:
Lack of Stakeholder Support
As with any program, the awareness program will require support from the management for it to be effective. In fact, where leadership is not involved or supporting the training, it gives the message that security is not important. It is also unfavorable because employees are less likely to take it seriously or apply learnings.
Sell awareness training to the executives as a business necessity and ensure they publicly and consistently support it. Engage them in launching the program through e-mail and video-announcement. Ensure that you incorporate feature executive support consistently throughout your materials to ensure that students understand that the exercise is compulsory.
Neglecting Continuous Training
Brief, one-off security awareness training, like an annual training that all employees go through, is insufficient. Threats related to cyberspace remain dynamic, and therefore having an education system where risks are pumped regularly is effective. Lack of regular training also has the effect of causing the knowledge concerned to be retained in an inefficient manner.
Training should be conducted continuously with follow-ups during one year. Email a security tip to the recipients once a week. Organize monthly online meetings with special guests. Educate through fun, use contests, games and other activities while ensuring that key messages are imparted. The purpose is to constantly reinforce good security practices in various ways and across different mediums.
Not Personalizing Messaging
Security awareness content used often is general and as such it is uncommon to find such content that is effective. Workers move off because the information appears unrelated to their actual exposures and work activities. Training has to be personalized to address the various audiences in a way that is most relevant to their access level, behavior and security concerns.
Carry out an audience analysis at the beginning of the campaign and divide your workforce into categories (such as, management, technicians, sales). Synchronize the content themes, the use cases, and the action items with each of the groups. Another aspect to look at is to deliver the information based on preference – are most comfortable with emails, or would they prefer microlearning videos, or even posters.
Making Training Boring
Boring security training always ensures that people will not be interested and they will not learn effectively. In the worst scenario, it would put people to sleep and retention tanks even if one finishes the content and delivery. But awareness programs are notoriously known to come in the form of an extensive policy document and monotonous power-point presentations – more like a sleep aid.
Add interaction, diverse and exciting elements to your materials. Enhance course knowledge with attractive eLearning modules that feature drag-and-drop activities. Make good use of graphic images like infographics. Integrate engaging narratives to improve people’s understanding and connection. Turn content into trivia games and incorporate a competition and ranking system. It is better to make training brief and interesting rather than cramming and repetitive. Get a little silly with an important topic!
Not Explaining Real-Life Impact
Organizational security policies are frequently presented in awareness training without explaining the relevance of such policies. Workers follow rules blindly and do not understand how such rules may help them or protect the enterprise. The absence of context on objectifiable threats and consequences may lead some to disregard training as pointless administrative work.
Make your program far more engaging by focusing on real life threats such as, identity theft, cyber bullying or hacked social media accounts that trainees may encounter. Employ statistics to estimate the dollar and image loss that result from breaches. Present reports describing recent accidents and their implications to ordinary people/businesses. These awareness building blocks create ‘WIIFT’ self-interest that leads to change of attitude.
Training out of Context: Implications for Training Design
Thus, for many constant employees, security training which is provided as an additional task, is simply shifted to the backburner. This is the strategy that is used when you build unintegrated modules on top of existing workloads, and this leads to low completion rates. When removed from genuine interpersonal contact, employee content is more alienating and bureaucratic.
Include training activities into the tools that personnel use constantly via email, team platforms, CRM and ERP. Take advantage of teachable moments – if the employees were to report a phishing email, educate them immediately. Create microlearning videos that focus on threats in the news at the moment. Employees learn lessons in a natural context and as part of their work, when the context is properly managed.
Not Testing Comprehension
There is no way of knowing whether the employees have understood the training content or they have just gone through the motions. You require such a scenario to determine the understanding level of the students and identify areas that require further teaching. If you perform awareness training without builds in testing, you stay in the dark whether this tactic is effective or not.
Include pre-course and post-course assessments to indicate progress after the training modules have been completed. Introduce knowledge check questions within content to make it more engaging and ensure that learners have understood the content. Employ random testing of a few employees each quarter to review retention numbers. Employ scores to adjust the messaging and activities to address vulnerable areas in the future.
Not Tracking Behavior
In essence, you seek behavioral change among the employees that improves the security stance. However, without observing real practices before and after training sessions, one cannot be sure of behavior shift or ROI.
Illustrate measures such as the risky baseline behaviours, the rates of compliant behaviours or security indicators such as password complexity, data encryption, speed in reporting phishing attempts. Incorporate frequency checks, surveys, audits, and walkthroughs as benchmarking and re-checking tools. Use technology instruments with usage statistics concerning security systems and protocols.
Identifying measurable adoption of best practices that are showcased in the training, as opposed to simple headcount of attendees, is vital for evidencing and enhancing effectiveness, in the longer term, success.
Skimping on Delivery Infrastructure
Most awareness programs simply assign training responsibilities to overburdened IT security staff without training expertise. Or they dedicate very little resources to creating home-grown PowerPoints, which lookRolling out superficial, boring materials developed haphazardly – rather than as a planned effort – weakens culture change on security.
Approach awareness training as the strategic education process that it is. Ensure that enough financial resources are provided in order to hire professionals in the field of instructional design, multimedia, adult learning psychology and other related fields. Create learning as personal as a product that you offer to your clients, as unique as any product that your firm develops. This foundation incorporates excellent content with effective delivery to increase security behaviour change.
Neglecting Vulnerable Groups
It is established that language barriers, workplace levels and cultural attitudes affect security awareness intake. If you adopt the strategy, ‘meet the needs of the majority and ignore the rest,’ you will find yourself with a group of workers with lower initial tech skills, limited command of the English language, or different cultural values. It entails targeted efforts to reversing possible knowledge gaps that contribute to vulnerability.
Be especially careful with usability of accessible design and language for those who are not native speakers of the languages of primary business environments. It might be useful to provide the training that is socially grounded considering regional and/or generational attitudes to work/technology and norms of using the technology. Make sure to cover digital literacy prerequisites before going over cyber issues for the latter group. This is especially the case because failing vulnerable groups has significant implications for the safety of both human and data.
Ignoring Insider Threats
While the concept of hackers is well-known, external hackers are the ones that are more frequently described in the news and are a subject of people’s creativity. However, those mistakes can be made by insiders and they are as dangerous if not more than external threats in many cases. Your own employees have the access, means and opportunity. However, security awareness training often ignores potential risks at the doorstep.
Provide focused information regarding insiders – address biases posing that co-workers, for example, always act with honorable intent and for the organization’s beneficial. Educate the public on social engineering scams that exploit interpersonal relations. Inform personnel of indicators of data theft by insiders. Offering a broad view of the threats from outside and inside the organization enhances the preparedness.
Not Gathering Feedback
Both workforces have different requirements influencing the appropriate awareness training design. Some matters that are pertinent in one sector may be almost negligible in another. Lack of constant engagement of the stakeholders and failure to seek their feedback hinders the process of customization adequately.
Administer surveys of learners prior, during, and after the training to check for gaps in the content delivered or the manner in which they are delivered. Focus group discussions can be conducted to gain further understanding of challenges and lack of knowledge. Schedule periodic meetings with department heads and the team leader to discuss intelligence regarding emerging needs. This process enhances the program in successive cycles while keeping it aligned with changing learner needs.
The elements of effective security awareness training include involvement, relevance, and flexibility based on annual assessment. To establish an program for driving the required tangible culture change supported by motivated, enlightened behaviors which effectively stifles threats, do not commit the following follies:
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