Why Personalization Matters in Human Risk Management

When you need crucial information, there’s nothing more frustrating—and less effective—than having to wade through hours of materials to find it. Don't get us wrong, a broad-spectrum approach can be useful in making sure all employees have the same basic understanding. But when different groups, roles, or segments of employees encounter different threats, it falls short.

In situations like these, it’s like studying for a college exam and highlighting the whole entire textbook. When everything is a priority, nothing is a priority. When it comes down to the wire, this can lead to serious vulnerabilities.

Living Security Leads With Human Risk Management

Having recently been recognized as an industry leader in the Forrester Wave Security Awareness and Training Solutions Q1 2022 report, Living Security understands how urgent this need is, and how necessary. But rather than try and force engagement with the same dull, yearly training just to check a box and get a requirement over with, it’s much more effective to target training interventions that speak to specific industries and specific roles.

As Jinan Budge, Principal Analyst with Forrester says, “Bombarding all users with the same amount of training on the same topics and at the same frequency is wasteful of employee time and productivity.” Instead, curate training or interventions that depend on the particular user’s behavior or role.

To do this, you need to understand more about your organization, about its people and the roles they inhabit. You need to understand what specific risks are more pressing based on those roles, and how to assess risk in real time in order to address security concerns before they happen.

This idea, customizing security awareness training for the people who need it most, is at the heart of Human Risk Management. Rather than taking a repair-and-recover approach, we believe that security awareness and training can and should start with empowering employees to be at the front lines of defense. 

Targeted Training, Specific Success

Now, we know what you might be thinking, because we’ve heard it before - "when it comes to managing risk, the human element is the biggest problem in cybersecurity". Since it’s been estimated that over 90% of security breaches are caused by human error, it’s understandable that cybersecurity teams, leaders, and CISOs would see humans as the weakest link.

However, this leads to an attitude shift as well as a shift in priorities. On paper, it makes sense to write off employee risk as a known issue and support vulnerabilities by implementing high-powered tech solutions. But in practice, it’s much more effective to work towards creating long-term behavioral changes.

The key factor that’s missing in all of this is the human element. When the security team is empowered with real-time, trackable data on which individuals, roles, and teams are at the most risk, then the focus narrows down from “all employees” to “these employees.” Once the team can see what kinds of threats are the most risky, then it makes matching customized training on those issues to the groups simple & easy (including tailoring cybersecurity programs for remote employees).

All of this is made possible through Living Security’s Unify Insights, which brings together metrics from security integrations your company may already be using in order to identify the human risks to your business. From one dashboard, CISOs can easily see what the risks are that apply to their organization, and which team members need training in order to combat those risks.

From this specialized approach comes an empowered, data-driven, human-focused cybersecurity plan, one that reflects the unique needs and challenges of your organization. Whether you’re looking at remote security challenges as businesses continue to develop their remote work policies, or phishing concerns specific to current trending topics, CISOs understand that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution—not unless you have the data.

An ounce of prevention is definitely worth a pound of cure.

To learn more about what Living Security Unify Insights can do for your organization, come check it out. Smarter tools, faster results, actionable plans, and real, human-first change. Explore Unify Insights today.