Marie White, Founder, CEO & President, Security Mentor.
In 2008, Security Mentor provided security awareness training to our first customers, concurrently we introduced what remains the most effective security awareness training model available – Brief, Frequent, Focused™ training.
Back in those days, security awareness training was mostly done in hour-long sessions, provided once a year, covering a multitude of topics. Employees dreaded training -- pressured by work responsibilities, they were either too busy to take training, or just too bored with it, and so tuned the training out, if they took it at all. The end result was employee behavior didn't change and cybersecurity risks remained high. Employees were often blamed as the cause of the problem – they didn't care or couldn't be trained, and security awareness training was denigrated as useless.
How things have changed. Employees are now widely recognized as one of the most critical components of the organizational security. And security awareness training is recognized as critical to achieving cyber secure employees. How did we get to this awakening?
The first step was to recognize that poor security awareness training was the cause of most training failures then, and unfortunately, still is today. Security Mentor's solution was to disrupt the market, and provide training designed for how people learn and work. We introduced a new training model – Brief, Frequent, Focused™ training – training delivered in 10-minute sessions, provided monthly, each lesson on a single topic. Why does this model work so well? Let's take a look at each component:
In this blog, I've shared why Security Mentor's Brief, Frequent, Focused™ training model is our secret sauce. Each component – brief, frequent and focused – is critical on its own, but also an integral part of the entire model, without which the overall training effectivity would be greatly reduced.
That said, a training model is only half of how to make security awareness training effective and successful. In an upcoming blog, we'll talk about the importance of engaging and interactive training. Until then, whether developing your own training or using a vendor's services, be sure to utilize the Brief, Frequent, Focused™ training model to ensure training success.