Here you are. You’ve done your cultural assessment, you were able to identify the holes in the organizations security awareness efforts, you modified training and created a 12 month content plan to fix this. It’s time to sit back, and see some real user behavior change right? Quick question: How do you know that your plan worked? Are users reporting more issues to the help desk? Are people more able to identify phishing emails? Are users retaining the information from annual …
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Punishment is evident in all aspects of our life to everything from getting drivers to stop speeding, to getting the dog to not bark at the mailman. Because of this, it is no wonder that several go to punishment when wanting to change user behavior. While punishment is a very powerful tool- that can produce almost immediate change in behavior- it is very hard to control and very hard to maintain. For these reasons, I rarely recommend using punishment when …
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Imagine that you are the head of security awareness at an organization (not a stretch for some) and have been charged with getting people to report issues to the help desk. You decide, in your infinite wisdom, to encourage them to report issues to the help desk by giving them $1 each time they report a valid problem. The week after implementing the new reward program the number of issues reported to the help desk has increased 100 fold. You …
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