No one is an island. We are all impacted by external influences, and this has an overwhelming impact on what we can achieve. As Helen Keller famously said, “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”
This powerful message is deeply connected to the theme of RSAC 2023 this year, Stronger Together. RSAC is the largest cybersecurity event in the world, and this year the discussion will be centered around community and collaboration.
RSA experts explain, “With a world of evolving threats to stop and solve, only by working as a team and continually adding new perspectives will we be able to affect the kind of progress that can shape policy, establish new best practices, and ensure our defenses become more diverse, more resolute, and far more effective.”
Machine Learning: Allowing Data to be Greater than the Sum of its Parts
This message holds an incredibly powerful lesson for the world of Security Awareness Training.
When organizations perform phishing simulations and security awareness training in a silo, they can only ever learn from their own employee performance data. By acting on their own data alone, they experience a number of problems, including:
- Extending time to value: Each customer is a blank slate, and the platform will need to learn over time via trial and error which testing is effective, and which doesn’t fit the bill.
- Limiting available intelligence: Very few companies have even tens of thousands of employees to glean data from, let alone millions. Most will be reliant on learning from a small data pool.
- Opening the business to risk: While Security Awareness Training catches up, employees are not learning. This means they are far more likely to fall victim to phishing scams and leak sensitive information.
At CybeReady, we’ve embraced the concept of “stronger together”, and used this to take Security Awareness Training to the next level. Our data-driven solution compliantly gathers data and uses it to crowdsource information that then gets fed back into the platform. The Machine Learning model is trained to continually optimize employees’ training content and even the frequency of testing, based on data from other organizations of similar sizes, industries, and geographies.
As the platform constantly adapts and optimizes, based on real-time information, this approach benefits the whole community.
Hitting the Ground Running with Effective Security Awareness Training
To understand the revolutionary benefits, consider the way that an application like Waze works to provide the user with an optimal experience. If every user simply had their own route and driving data, the app would be far less useful.
Instead, by gathering all relevant user data into a single data stream, a driver can be alerted to congestion on their route, provided with smarter route planning, and even given additional information on external factors such as speed cameras, potential parking locations, and charging infrastructure. Customers are benefiting from the millions of data points that have been fed into the platform over the years, and they can reap those benefits from day one.
The CybeReady Security Awareness solution offers similar benefits. A customer who is joining CybeReady never has to start from scratch. The data accumulated in the platform can suggest the ideal campaigns to start with, based on organizations of a similar demographic. This allows businesses to hit the ground running when reducing risk in their environment.
At CybeReady we use two distinct feedback loops – the data from employees’ performance, and also CISO preferences. We can identify what is working best from how employee performance metrics are evolving over time, and we also have insight into the behavior of security decision-makers. If for example a number of CISOs that work for financial institutions all select or deselect specific simulations or training content, new banking customers will be able to see that reflected in their own campaign recommendations.
These suggested campaigns simply act as a starting point. After 3 or 4 cycles of training, the algorithm will be able to use real-world employee data and optimize training based on organizational performance.
Best thing? The more customers use the solution, the more data is fed into the platform, and the better the training becomes, both internally, and for the whole CybeReady userbase. Thanks to collaboration and community – the only way is up!
Let’s get even stronger together at RSAC 2023! CybeReady will be meeting cybersecurity leaders at Oren’s Hummus at 71 3rd st., San Francisco on Wednesday, April 26th, between 11 am – 3 pm.
Schedule your demo meeting here and enjoy a complimentary, delicious lunch buffet!
