How CISOs can build a long-term and robust cybersecurity culture within their organisation

It isn’t news to CISOs, but the frequency at which cyberattacks are happening is alarming, to say the least. It’s a situation that has led to an arms race of sorts, with both sides continually ramping up their capabilities in a bid to either breach or protect an organisation.

Despite a growing understanding in businesses towards the importance of educating and informing employees about cybersecurity, the solutions businesses often implement are rarely the most effective options.

Rather than forcing employees to complete formal, often monotonous training courses, it is far more effective for businesses to focus on developing a culture of cybersecurity. As a CISO, the responsibility for developing the strategies required to develop and sustain a culture of cybersecurity starts with you.

These are some of the key considerations and steps required when developing the framework:

Ensure that strategic objectives are clear

Before you start planning your culture change strategy, the first step is to ensure that the strategic objectives are clear. You need to define precisely what your company wants to achieve by developing a cybersecurity culture, and what value you expect to gain from the work involved.

Creating a mission statement will help to communicate the objective across your company, while at the same time building a greater understanding of what you are looking to achieve.

Analyse the existing culture

Once you have defined your strategic objectives, the next step is to analyse the existing state of culture to see which areas need to be addressed.

This process should identify the biggest cybersecurity risks using human risk analysis. You will probably have 5 or 6 risks that you will need to improve upon through methods such as training, workshops, and focus groups.

At Bob’s Business, we analyse your existing culture through our Human Vulnerability Assessment, which uses a Phishing Baseline and Awareness Questionnaire to determine your organisation’s blind spots; from here, we create your tailored course and optimal implementation strategy.

Design a culture change strategy

Using the data you have collated, you can now design a strategy that targets the areas of weakness and drive improvements in each area.

The action plans should include defining key stakeholders to provide support, in addition to outlining the training solutions necessary to deliver the required outcomes. You also need to incorporate ways of measuring the progress and success of each action.

Implement the culture change strategy

Implementing the culture change strategy will involve rolling out the strategy across the full organisation, using stakeholders and focus groups for support and developing communications to update the rest of the business.

Delivery of the required training programme is a vital element of implementing the culture change strategy, alongside implementing the other actions that target the areas of weakness.

Continually review and improve the culture

Once the culture change strategy has been implemented, regular reviews should take place. New vulnerabilities are always emerging, these must be identified in order to ensure that progress continues to be made towards improving the cybersecurity culture.

Where necessary, new actions should be planned to ensure that the right areas are being addressed, in order to keep the business as well protected as possible from cyberattacks.

If you are a CISO looking for the right cybersecurity training solutions to enable you to execute your culture change strategy, learn more about Bob’s Culture and the unique approach that delivers incredible training outcomes for organisations just like yours.