Security Awareness Training

Introduction: Why Security is Everyone’s Business

Employees play a crucial role in protecting your organization’s cyber network. Cyber attacks increasingly target individuals, putting employees on the front lines of an organization’s cyber defenses. But many employees lack adequate security awareness knowledge they need to identify threats, mitigate risks, and protect their organization against malicious threats. That’s where security awareness training comes into play. 

What is security awareness training? Security awareness training refers to a structured educational process designed to cultivate a heightened understanding and vigilance regarding cybersecurity among employees within an organization. It encompasses comprehensive programs aimed at educating individuals about potential cyber threats, best practices for safeguarding sensitive information, and protocols for recognizing and mitigating risks in the digital landscape.

Most organizations understand the importance of educating employees on security awareness and have training programs in place, but most are ineffective, and don’t adequately prepare employees to safeguard their organizations.

Common Challenges
Limited Resources: Many security leaders are already plagued with limited staff, skills and time amidst industry-wide talent shortages and skill gaps, making it hard to optimize their programs - even if they know what needs to be done.

This makes program optimization - which often requires a lot of time and specific skills - challenging. 

Skill Gap: For example, continuously evolving content to align with new threats and technologies is key to ensuring training stays relevant - but it also requires a lot of time and someone rehearsed in cyber threat intel. 

Building Engaging Training for a Diverse Workforce.Optimizing a corporate security awareness training program requires security leaders to create training that engages employees across various technical levels, skills, roles, learning styles, and even attention span. 

Some organizations do this by setting up custom learning pathways and curriculums for various roles and technical levels, and provide multiple options for learning consumption (e.g., different channels, mediums, nano modules, etc.) and/or supplemental resources to support learners of all types. 

But oftentimes, leaders only have time and support to offer one security awareness training program and/or content that is made available for all employees. These leaders may struggle to create corporate-level strategy and content that effectively balances comprehension and engagement across varying employee learning needs. 

Check-the-Box Training. With limited time and resources, leaders focus entire programs around top-of-mind requirements/policies and create surface-level content that doesn’t foster a deep understanding of cyber risk, nor foster a culture of security awareness. 

A security awareness and training solution needs to contribute to an overall security culture. Applying a “checkbox to compliance approach” to training does not foster a culture of awareness, nor is it responsive to the ever-changing threat landscape. It’s important to make cybersecurity awareness an integrated and ongoing part of the organization’s work culture. Awareness starts with the individual, and every employee has a responsibility to ensure the safety of an organization’s information and assets.


Benefits of Haiku’s Gamified Approach to Security Awareness Training
Gamified approaches, like Haiku, revolutionize training by transforming potentially tedious subjects into interactive, enjoyable, and educational experiences, fostering a culture of cyber-awareness.

Engagement and Interaction: Gamification increases engagement, reduces resistance, and makes training enjoyable - which has shown to increase learning retention. Through its interactive elements, it enhances participation and fosters enhanced learnings. 
Real-world Skill Building: Haiku's gamified approach teaches real-world cybersecurity skills via video games, like password cracking and network scanning.
Employee Awareness: Gamified training contributes to increased security awareness and improved success of awareness programs. 

Haiku’s Security Awareness Training Suite
A security awareness solution that helps organizations manage their human cybersecurity risk. The suite includes a collection of modules designed to help organizations deploy training programs across diverse workforces and foster a security-aware culture that drives ongoing resiliency. The suite features a collection of employee security training modules designed to address training needs across various technical abilities, roles and regulatory or industry compliance training requirements for compliance-sensitive organizations. 

Password Best Practices & Anti-Phishing
Business Email Compromise
SEC Notification Rules Tabletop Module
Anti-Social Engineering Mobile App
HIPPA Module
Family Educational Rights & Privacy Acts (FERPA) Module
Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA) Module