Nov 30, 2009—Organizational Tactics for Information Security Awareness Training

by Karen Crumbley, Product Manager, and Ben Murphy, Senior Manager, Information Security

Information Security Officers must adhere to GLBA requirements and along the way there are seemingly endless obstacles and distractions that make it difficult to achieve this goal. For example, let’s look at the required employee information security awareness training that must be done at least annually. How can you keep this information fresh, interesting, and timely? How can you balance what information is important to reinforce versus what new information should be incorporated? The task can be daunting, but thinking about information security awareness training using a tiered approach could be the best methodology for your financial institution. The primary objective is for your employees to understand how to protect your financial institution’s (FI’s) non-public information.

The following are suggestions for tactics to include in your approach to information security awareness training:

• Conduct an Initial Assessment – Take a look around. What are your most obvious outstanding security issues? Do you notice a recurring theme? For instance, are employees leaving their desks without locking their computers, or perhaps throwing away documents in the trash that include non-public information? Review your institution’s Incident Response Plan. Do you notice a pattern? Do employees repeatedly download malware because they are not aware of the need to take precautions? If so, you may want to incorporate this information into your training, even if you have presented the information before. Certainly, there is always a new employee or someone that may take notice this time around, so it is always a great idea to reinforce key points.

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