Develop a Security Awareness and Training Program That Empowers End Users

Turn end users into your organization’s secret security weapon.

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Contributors

Sky Sharma, CIO
Adrien de Beaupré, Certified Instructor and Penetration Tester, SANS Institute
Robert Hawk, Information Security Expert, xMatters, Inc.
Steven Woodward, CEO, Cloud Perspectives
Riddhi Patel, Information Security Analyst, National Life Group
Blair Panasiuk, Manager of IT Operations, Dynalife
Erich Salie, Information Security Officer
David Shipley, Director of Strategic Initiatives, University of New Brunswick
Paul Daley, Sr. Analyst for Security Management, Risk and Audit, Toronto District School Board
Glen Maxfield, IT Security Manager, Workers Compensation Board of Manitoba

Your Challenge

The fast evolution of the cybersecurity landscape requires security training and awareness programs that are frequently updated and improved.
Security and awareness training programs often fail to engage end users. Lack of engagement can lead to low levels of knowledge retention.
Irrelevant or outdated training content does not properly prepare your end users to effectively defend the organization against security threats.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

One-time, annual training is no longer sufficient for creating an effective security awareness and training program.
By presenting security as a personal and individualized issue, you can make this new personal focus a driver for your organizational security awareness and training program.

Impact and Result

Create a training program that delivers smaller amounts of information on a more frequent basis to minimize effort, reduce end-user training fatigue, and improve content relevance.
Evaluate and improve your security awareness and training program continuously to keep its content up-to-date. Leverage end-user feedback to ensure content remains relevant to those who receive it.

Start here – read the Executive Brief

Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should develop a security awareness and training program that empowers end users, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

Develop a Security Awareness and Training Program That Empowers End Users – Executive Brief

1. Develop your training program

Create or mature a security awareness and training program that is tailored to your organization.

2. Design an effective training delivery plan

Explore methods of training delivery and select the most effective solutions.

Guided Implementations

This guided implementation is a four call advisory process.

Guided Implementation #1 - Develop your training program

Call #1 - Build a development plan for your training program.

Call #2 - Learn best practices for the execution of development initiatives.

Guided Implementation #2 - Design an effective training delivery plan

Call #1 - Identify possible delivery methods.

Call #2 - Create a training schedule.

Book Your Workshop

Onsite workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost onsite delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

Module 1: Outline the Plan for Long-term Program Improvement

The Purpose

Identify the maturity level of the existing security awareness and training program and set development goals.
Establish program milestones and outline key initiatives for program development.
Identify metrics to measure program effectiveness.

Key Benefits Achieved

Identified the gaps between the current maturity level of the security awareness and training program and future target states.

Activities

Outputs

1.1

Create a program development plan.

Customized development plan for program.

1.2

Investigate and select metrics to measure program effectiveness.

Tool for tracking metrics.

1.3

Execute some low-hanging fruit initiatives for collecting metrics: e.g. create a knowledge test, feedback survey, or gamification guide.

Customized knowledge quiz ready for distribution.
Customized feedback survey for training.
Gamification program outline.

Module 2: Identify and Assess Audience Groups and Security Training Topics

The Purpose

Determine the unique audience groups within your organization and evaluate their risks and vulnerabilities.
Prioritize training topics and audience groups to effectively streamline program development.

Key Benefits Achieved

Created a comprehensive list of unique audience groups and the corresponding security training that each group should receive.
Determined priority ratings for both audience groups and the security topics to be delivered.

Activities

Outputs

2.1

Identify the unique audience groups within your organization and the threats they face.

Risk profile for each identified audience group.

2.2

Determine the priority levels of the current security topics.

Priority scores for all training topics.

2.3

Review audience groups and determine which topics need to be delivered to each group.

List of relevant security topics for each identified audience group.

Module 3: Plan the Training Delivery

The Purpose

Identify all feasible delivery channels for security training within your organization.
Build a vendor evaluation tool and shortlist or harvest materials for in-house content creation.

Key Benefits Achieved

List of all potential delivery mechanisms for security awareness and training.
Built a vendor evaluation tool and discussed a vendor shortlist.
Harvested a collection of free online materials for in-house training development.

Activities

Outputs

3.1

Discuss potential delivery mechanisms for training, including the purchase and use of a vendor.

List of available delivery mechanisms for training.

3.2

If selecting a vendor, review vendor selection criteria and discuss potential vendor options.

Vendor assessment tool and shortlist.

3.3

If creating content in-house, review and select available resources on the web.

Customized security training presentations.

Module 4: Create a Training Schedule for Content Deployment

The Purpose

Create a plan for deploying a pilot program to gather valuable feedback.
Create an ongoing training schedule.
Define the end users’ responsibilities towards security within the organization.

Key Benefits Achieved

Created a plan to deploy a pilot program.
Created a schedule for training deployment.
Defined role of end users in helping protect the organization against security threats.

Activities

Outputs

4.1

Build training modules.

Documented modular structure to training content.

4.2

Create an ongoing training schedule.

Training schedule.

4.3

Define and document your end users’ responsibilities towards their security.

Security job description template.
End-user training policy.

After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve. See our top member experiences for this Blueprint, and what our clients have to say.

Client

Experience

Impact

$ Saved

Days Saved

Testimonial

County of Nevada

Guided Implementation

9/10

N/A

Ian listened and provided helpful suggestions

Town Of Marana

Guided Implementation

10/10

$13,236

Ian was amazing! His knowledge on the subject-area allowed us to go with a product we otherwise would have never known about. I was able to demo different products with staff to ultimately select a solution that we are confident will resonate with our end users. It's very refreshing to speak with someone who is unbiased and ultimately cares about your needs!

Palm Beach State College

Guided Implementation

10/10

N/A

Ben was very helpful and knowledgeable about the subject matter of ?Humanize the Security Awareness and Training Program.?

Capital Regional District

Guided Implementation

9/10

$7,000

Ian is very knowledgeable and was able to assist me by providing best practice solutions to some of the issues that I have run into when implementing Security Awareness Training in the past. Very valuable insights. Also, Ian knew a lot about the various vendors in this space and provided me with very good recommendations and what to look out for. When I mentioned a new vendor in the space that Ian had not heard of he was able to reach out to them to do some initial research and provide me with his initial thoughts. He really went out of his way to help me and made me feel like an important client. I would be very happy to work with Ian again in the future.

Pennon Group

Guided Implementation

10/10

N/A

CIEE, Org.

Guided Implementation

10/10

$13,236

Great session with Ian on how to approach our Security Awareness program. It really helped.

Government of New Brunswick

Guided Implementation

9/10

N/A

Ian was very open to questions and provided helpful answers. Ian also provided good follow up material after the call.

Ohio State Bar Association

Guided Implementation

10/10

$2,514

Best part was Ian's advice, and reassurance that we were not the only client with gaps in our security knowledge. Worst part was trying to get dialed in to the conference bridge, but that turned out to be a problem on our end, not WebEx.

Thames Valley District School Board

Guided Implementation

8/10

N/A

The New York Racing Association Inc

Guided Implementation

10/10

N/A

Ian provided very valuable feedback and guidance, from features, pricing and rollout methodology prospective, on what should I be looking for in a Cyber security training program. I was able to find a suitable vendor and are now in process to roll out program here at NYRA.

Kinze Manufacturing

Guided Implementation

10/10

$6,618

There was no bad. I'd like to give you something to improve on, but it was professional, informative, and there was good follow up. I thought I knew who to look at but I was wrong. My current leader is a company Ian turned me onto.

Griffith University

Guided Implementation

10/10

$44,682

Ian Mullholland undertook a very detailed review of Griffith University's cyber awareness plan and provided valuable insights and feedback based on best practice review and very helpful suggestions in avoiding commonly biased areas in terms of measurement and evaluation of statistical results Ian also gave deep insights into some of the ways we can improve our application of our cyber awareness plan applied to our extensive cohort which will help ensure the success of the plan.

Lgi

Guided Implementation

10/10

$13,236

The best part was the reinforcement of what we are currently doing. No bad parts

LiDestri Foods, Inc.

Guided Implementation

9/10

$13,236

Surescripts

Guided Implementation

9/10

$2,382

It was a good discussion. I was looking for the silver bullet and there really isn't one for all of the roles that might be appropriate for a roles based training program. Good starter discussion though.

Symcor Inc.

Guided Implementation

9/10

N/A

Huntington University

Guided Implementation

9/10

N/A

Ian's assistance in walking through the process and providing suggestions and input in many different areas was invaluable.

Pharmascience

Guided Implementation

9/10

N/A

Pace Suburban Bus Service

Guided Implementation

10/10

$6,618

Ian's insight and recommendations regarding Pace security awareness initiatives that will help steer them to a greater chance of success.

The New York Racing Association Inc

Guided Implementation

10/10

N/A

Ian was great. We covered everything I wanted to discuss on our call. He gave valuable feedback and some great ideas that we will be considering when we roll out our training program.

Northern Trust Company

Guided Implementation

10/10

N/A

I was not able to provide a response for question 2 and 3 as I will not know the time or cost savings until we implement. However, the meeting was great as I received insightful information that I can use to improve my metrics area of our security awareness program.

County of Nevada

Guided Implementation

10/10

$2,647

Appreciate Ian listening to my needs/wants. Finding something to take away or for him to find for me. And hearing how/what others have learned from doing a similar initiative.

Blue Ant Media

Guided Implementation

10/10

N/A

Extremely impressed with the amount of information Ian readily provided. Ian was very clearly knowledgeable in the topic discussed but, what I most appreciated was that he maintained a comfortable conversation where there was no judgement in my lack of knowledge. A thank you does not suffice for how great this first call with Ian was.

Soboba Band of Luiseno Indians

Guided Implementation

10/10

$33,091

American Systems Corporation

Guided Implementation

8/10

N/A

Surgi-Care, Inc.

Guided Implementation

9/10

$2,647

Very informative call. Our rep gave me real examples from other companies he's worked with and was very helpful.

Mt. Hood Community College

Guided Implementation

10/10

$2,647

Best part was info shared and access to tools. This will save us time in creating new materials and we will have tools that follow best practices and have been vetted. There was no worse part of the experience. All good.

Canadian National Railway

Guided Implementation

10/10

N/A

Lincoln Electric System

Guided Implementation

9/10

N/A

U.S. Holdings

Guided Implementation

9/10

$33,091

Ian was very helpful, opening my eyes to the concept of outsourced training program. With properly trained employees I anticipate a reduction in security incidents that will result in an annual saving of about $25,000