Published on December 14, 2009 by Karen Letain in Planning, Reinforcement Tools

Learning to tie your shoes

I purchased a new pair of runners for my 7 year old and these had laces. I had taught him to tie his shoes in Kindergarten but with most of the shoes and boots having velcro, I did not realize that the lesson taught in Kindergarten did not stick. I was both shocked and dismayed to realize that my Grade 2 child did not know how to tie his shoes! As a parent I also had that wonderful "guilt" feeling that goes along with realizing that I probably didn't do a very good job initially as I was in a rush (as always) and should have probably spent more time having him practice so that he retained the knowledge. I also should have bought him more shoes with laces!

So...how does this relate to security awareness? Like any type of training or learning, if a person does not practice what has been learned it does not get retained. Security awareness is even more difficult since we are ultimately trying to change behavior.  Individuals are already set in their ways of performing various job tasks throughout the day. Security awareness is about changing the way in which those tasks are performed. Teaching a security awareness class once a year and providing no other reinforcement or communication on the subject will not sufficiently change behavior of your end users.

Not putting aside enough time as an educator to ensure that your security awareness program is planned and supported properly will lead to additional stress, guilt and ultimately to the failure of the awareness program.

So...what do we do?  We must ensure that awareness is done in small bite sized amounts that are easily digestible and then follow up with reinforcement tools or methods - ie., posters, newsletters, video clips, spot checks or walkabout reminders that catch people doing what was taught correctly or not correctly. Providing continuous training throughout the year will aid in retention. Providing rewards and or encouragement for the training being accomplished and for a change in behavior will provide you with a better and more widely accepted security awareness program.

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Published on June 19, 2009 by Karen Letain in News

Measuring Security Awareness Training on a budget

Rolling out a large Information Security Awareness Training Program can be an incredibly daunting task. Especially, if you have to ensure that your efforts are measurable in order to meet industry standards or adhere to legislation.

Let’s face it, you can’t measure the number of times employees look at the security awareness posters you just put up in the coffee room or in the elevator and how the heck do you measure the impact of a banner on the company intranet? Did it really change the outcomes and behaviors of the employees?

And what about that 1.5 hour live training session? Did anyone actually listen and has implemented the recommendations?

If your budget has been cut and you can’t afford an online training component with a back-end LMS to track and provide reporting functions then start small and try the following techniques:

1.    After your live training sessions, walk around and measure the impact by talking to employees and asking questions.

2.    At lunch, do “walk-by’s”.  Check to see if employees are leaving their desks without adhering to the “clean desk” policy and have left their laptops unlocked, etc.  If so, create some friendly reminder cards to place on their desks as reinforcement.

3.    Pick a month a year and do a “security awareness month” combine short videos with games and posters that supplements your regular yearly ongoing training programs.

4.    Provide incentives (if possible – even an apple, chocolate bar, etc) for those you catch doing the “right” thing when it comes to being security aware.

The key is to track all of these items. Start a spreadsheet and track the number of employees talked to per month, the number of incidents discovered in the walk-by’s and the number of employees caught doing something correctly.  Create some nice monthly graphs with the data and provide them to management so they know you are on top of the security awareness issue.

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