Instructions to Develop User and Executive Participation in Cybersecurity Training Programs

    Cybersecurity is a hot topic right now, and it’s only getting hotter. It seems like every week there is a new cyber attack or some major development in the field of cybersecurity. As a leader seeking to increase employee participation in CyberSecurity Training programs, you’re probably experiencing pressure from above to do more in order to, quite literally, keep your company safe. The problem with this is that many leaders have trouble producing engaging learning materials for their employees since they may not be experts in the subject themselves.

Especially in CyberSecurity Training Program, we strive to achieve a 90% level of participation, because it's the mark of really engaging your employees and executives. But what do you need to know to achieve this? What skills or information do you need to teach them? And how can you deliver this information to make it really engaging?

It's always important to keep employees in mind when making decisions about moving forward with a security awareness program. In this article, we'll examine how you can get the most out of your security training program by encouraging more participation from all employees to really get security top of mind and build a cyber security culture.

Identifying What is Your Target Audience:

If you want your security awareness training to engage your employees, it needs to be relevant. Unfortunately, there's no shortcut to producing relevant material; the only way is to take time to identify the specific types of cyber threats they're exposed to daily and what makes them so threatening.

For most businesses, it's important to be able to see your consumers as members of specific groups:

Executives – Executives and upper management need to be in the loop about security risks to better understand the importance of supporting and funding security awareness initiatives.

Managers – Managers not only ensure that the company’s resources are protected, they also act as ambassadors and security role models by setting precedence and creating a culture of responsibility.

End users – End users are like firefighters – the job of extinguishing the flames. That is why it is vital for them to adopt best practices and behaviors so that they can fight fire with fire!

IT Staff – Your IT security team will protect the systems and help keep your environment secure for your company's personal data.

Your audience consists of experts in specialized, unique roles. In addition to the fundamental information security guidance, you must consider what other role-based regulations they need to manage the particular risks they face.

Recommended Topics for Per audience:

The topics you will cover in your training should depend on the types of security risks that are specific to your environment, but there are some universal topics everyone should cover. Sometimes those experienced in one area may be helpful to those who are inexperienced or unaware of these fields:

1. Manager:  Everything you need to know about executive topics plus an overview of information security and governance including your IT security environment, proposed security awareness program, and IT security controls.

2. Executive: Consider covering topics like common security risks facing your organization, safe use of mobile technology and information, handling sensitive information properly, and protecting your data from being exposed to fraud or theft.

3. End-users: As you gain higher knowledge in the field of security, remember to consider topics that include information privacy and security, principles related to internet usage (how to navigate social media plus more safely use cloud computing), cyber-attacks (common phishing scams, social engineering included), and data handling.

4. IT Staff: Raising awareness of security amongst your collaborators, reconsider the stability and robustness of one's computing environment in light of network security overview, application security overview, common network and application attacks, system development life cycle, secure coding, cryptography, and key management.

5. Specialized roles: Design training courses around what threats Help Desk personnel are most likely to encounter, such as social engineering attacks, and the Information Security Awareness Training for all individuals in finance, retail, or the HR department should cover how to abide by PCI DSS' (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) policies, while Internet Safety training should be provided to third parties.

Build Effective CyberSecurity Training Materials for Your Audience

Once you know who your target audience is, make sure your content is created in a way that makes it easy for them to come back time after time. It all starts with educational topics relevant to their day-to-day activities.

For example, if your end-users are sales or account representatives who send lots of emails back and forth, you may be able to teach them how to detect phishing scams by using training materials on phishing threats and phishing simulations.

Need to Know How to Motivate Employees Intrinsically

The level of motivation that employees have to engage with your training program is more or less dependent on how easy it is for them to engage with your security awareness program. If your audience isn’t intrinsically motivated, they probably won’t want to take part in one of your security awareness programs; they are not likely to be able to know why it’s important or relevant to their jobs and daily routines.

You can motivate people to participate to protect your organization’s data assets by giving employees a role in course creation.

By encouraging them to take ownership of making their security practices more mainstream you empower them not only professionally, but also personally. Helping others helps one to truly see the changes he or she is contributing toward and that helps build a sense of pride, which can also serve as motivation to continue being an advocate for better online safety practices.

Don’t Forget to Champion Executive Participation

One of the biggest mistakes that an organization can make when building a security awareness training program is to fail to see the importance of executive participation in their security awareness training program instead of opting for focusing on less senior employees.

Conclusion:

No shortcut will help you know how to increase employee participation in security awareness programs. You can research trending security topics but, ultimately, it is about knowing your audience well.