Phishing
How to Build an Effective Security Awareness Program
This is a step-by-step guide to build a strong security awareness and training program that empowers your employees and protects your business.
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Organizations invest in advanced tools to secure their assets, but humans are still the most persistent attack vector. Each year, this is reinforced by the overwhelming number of breaches that stem from human behaviour. Ultimately, employees are being asked to be hypervigilant all the time – despite their best efforts, everybody makes mistakes, and you can’t defend what you don’t know. By building a strong security awareness and training program, you can help your employees become your first line of defense against cyberattacks.
Here are the steps to help you introduce a security awareness and training strategy in your organization:
1. Identify the key stakeholders and get executive buy-in
Find the key personnel that would need to be involved in your security awareness strategy and ensure you have strong executive support. Executives will be able to obtain the budget and resources needed to implement the program; they will also drive culture and participation by positioning security as a company-wide priority.
To win buy-in from C-levels, communicate how the program aligns with company-wide priorities including compliance mandates and digital transformation. You can also explain the potential financial impact of human-driven breaches as well as the return on investment through estimated savings.
2. Assess your organization’s cybersecurity maturity level
Conduct a needs assessment to identify where your employees have the biggest gaps, so that you know where to prioritize training. To do this, you can run organizational surveys about security knowledge, conduct a baseline phishing simulation, and evaluate previous incidents.
3. Set risk-based objectives
Define outcome-driven goals depending on your people, processes and technology. These targets will provide a clear way to track progress and demonstrate value.
Here are some examples of goals:
- Reducing simulation click rates
- Increasing training completion rates
- Increased reporting of suspicious emails to IT/Infosec
- Reduced incidents of breaches due to human error
- Implementing and measuring user risk scores
4. Select the method that aligns best with your organization
Based on your organization’s size and infrastructure, you should choose the appropriate tools. You can use a dedicated security awareness and training offering that combines modern phishing simulations with risk-based training modules. One of the advantages here is being able to rely on a vendor to offer and update a library of purpose-built training content. Organizations can also have their own internal Learning Management System (LMS) to deliver their own training to employees and look for a separate tool to complement it.
5. Strategic rollout and engagement
Ensuring your employees are engaged with cybersecurity initiatives is key. There are several things you can do to get them to buy-in:
- Internal promotion: use posters, emails, and online banners to reinforce your message.
- Kickoff message from leadership
- Create a space dedicated to cybersecurity policies that is accessible to all employees
- Ensure the training is interesting and digestible for different audiences
- Use Cybersecurity Awareness month in October to promote the program and host activities.
- To drive engagement, you can offer employees incentives (e.g., gift cards) and add gamification strategies (e.g., leaderboards, badges).
6. Measure the effectiveness of your program
It's important to track the metrics of your security awareness program to maintain ongoing support. Completion rates can account for employees’ knowledge. You also need to demonstrate whether their behaviour is ultimately changing as a result of the program – this can be seen in metrics such as the number of reported phishing incidents. You can also track fluctuations in the user risk scores that a vendor will assign to employees.
7. Segment and customize
Employees will carry different levels of risk based on things like their role and behavior. A strong security awareness solution should go beyond phishing simulation results and allow you to customize training based on real risk. This is where automation can be a game changer by allowing you to assign risk-based training without constant manual action.
8. Develop a cybersecurity culture
The ultimate goal of your program should be to drive lasting behaviour change and create a security-conscious culture. This is the result of a strategic training program, leadership support, and consistent communications across employees. When done right, security can become a core part of how your organization operates.
A Unique Approach to Human Risk
Trend Micro includes security awareness and training capabilities within our threat and exposure management strategy to give you a holistic view of your organizational risk. Together, they allow you to proactively address all avenues of risk with more context and clarity. This also provides the activity and data to build a complete risk profile of your employees – you can then see how users are impacting your overall risk posture and tackle these concerns head-on.
This approach enables you to:
- Prioritize training for high-risk users based on a myriad of their actions and behaviour.
- Predict employees in potential attack paths and target them with training.
- Track employee behaviour change based on metrics like the overall risk of account compromise and the number of accounts with weak authentication.
- Set up automated workflows to deploy training to employees based on selected risk events and conditions.
- Consolidate your security awareness, exposure management, and identity capabilities for faster and more strategic risk reduction.
The Trend Vision™ One Security Awareness app is part of our Cyber Risk Exposure Management (CREM) offering. Learn how we can support you on your journey.