Every employee needs a basic understanding of cybersecurity and how to spot cybercriminal attacks because cybercriminals can directly target their email inboxes with seemingly harmless messages that can compromise your organization’s entire network. This can be a difficult task, as the threat landscape is constantly changing, so even knowledgeable employees can fall behind and need more training.
For this reason, ongoing phishing training and testing are great ways to help users stay alert and aware of the real threats they will face. However, some users will struggle to learn how to spot phishing emails and present a greater risk to your organization. Creating an organized training plan to assist these users can help you mitigate the risk of repeat clickers.
This article will provide an overview of remedial training, tips on assessing its need, and a detailed plan for implementing your own program.
Assessing the Need for Remedial Training
Every organization must define its risk tolerance to determine who requires remedial training. This tolerance depends on the types of data employees access, its sensitivity, and the industry in which the organization operates.
By understanding this risk tolerance, you can identify which users need remedial training based on their performance in phishing simulations. Some organizations provide remedial training for every phishing simulation failure, while others do so after a second failure or two failures within a year.
Knowing your organization's risk tolerance and user profile will help establish an appropriate threshold for remedial training.
Designing Effective Remedial Training Programs
Cybersecurity remedial training programs are large-scale efforts that should be well-planned and communicated compassionately to your employees. This type of training must be introduced in a positive light and framed as an opportunity for the organization to grow as a whole.
Here are some steps to take to ensure this type of program is well received:
Executive buy-in
Phishing simulations and remedial training can be easily perceived as entrapment if employees aren’t properly educated on the impact phishing can have. Your executive leaders must endorse and support a training and simulations program. Involving HR and the frontline managers is essential when planning this type of program.
Managers will not only know how to introduce this kind of training correctly to their team, but they can also be the first line of support when users are enrolled in remediation training. A successful remediation training program will rely on strong collaboration among leadership teams.
Consistency
Remedial training can only succeed if it’s executed as part of a larger goal of building a cybersecurity mindset within your company. The best way to demonstrate the seriousness of such an endeavor is by having a consistent schedule of cybersecurity training.
Personalization
One of remedial training programs' biggest enemies is employee engagement. This type of additional training is fighting an uphill battle in that regard, and it must be tailored perfectly to your employees’ needs for them to take it seriously.
While consistency is a good way to make employees care about this kind of training, relevancy is even more important. If employees can’t directly relate the course material to their daily tasks, the chance of retaining the impertinent content can be low.
Implementing Remedial Training in Phases
To convey the severity of a security breach while remaining positive about it, we recommend that remedial training must be rolled out in three phases:
Phase 1: Immediate Response
Whether it is displayed on a webpage after the action or sent directly from a manager, feedback upon clicking a link in a phishing simulation must be instant.
Employees must be immediately informed when they fail a phishing simulation and understand what they missed. This timely feedback helps them learn and improve their ability to recognize and avoid phishing attempts in the future.
It’s also a good idea to share the results of a phishing simulation, especially if there have been failures. It is recommended to send a company-wide email post-phishing simulation containing the following metrics for transparency:
Failure rate
Report rate
Performance trends
A screenshot of the simulation
Red flags (indicators that the email was suspicious)
Recognition of teams, departments, etc., who had the highest report rate/lowest failure rate
If the user requires remedial training at this point, it is best to have their manager relay the information rather than the IT team to adequately convey the gravity of the situation. Employees are much more likely to take the process seriously if it is handled by their direct supervisor.
Phase 2: Intensive Training
When remedial training is scheduled, users must have the opportunity to ask questions and receive additional guidance on challenging subjects. Ensuring the training is free of technical jargon and encourages questions keeps the audience engaged and helps them test their knowledge effectively.
If possible, this training should not be held only with the users who failed the test. Make it a compulsory company-wide activity to ensure no negative stigmas are created towards remedial training.
Phase 3: Follow-Up and Reinforcement
Phishing simulations are essential for regularly assessing your risk and evaluating the success of your remedial training program. Conducting these simulations helps identify vulnerabilities and measure how well your employees can recognize and respond to phishing attempts.
The frequency of these simulations depends on factors such as employee availability and the overall risk level faced by your organization.
If an employee repeatedly fails phishing simulations, it’s important to have an escalation process in place for each additional failure. Each step increases the amount of training and, in severe cases, escalates to HR and the employee’s manager.
Reinforcement doesn’t just happen through additional training. Sending a personalized message to employees who successfully report phishing attacks is a great way to congratulate them on their accomplishment.
This recognition reinforces positive behavior and encourages continued vigilance against cyber threats.
A company leaderboard could be created and displayed to show the best report rates.
Trophies or tokens are also a great way to reward employees who are vigilant against phishing attacks. Any other creative reward, like a designated parking spot or tickets to a raffle, encourages cybersecurity learning while keeping things fun.
Monitoring and Measuring Remedial Training Effectiveness
Remedial training programs must be carefully tracked and monitored to ensure that they strengthen cybersecurity awareness and that employees don’t develop training fatigue.
The best metrics to keep track of for this purpose are:
Click rate to assess company risk level
Repeat value rate to identify repeat clickers
Report rate to determine if employees have stopped clicking and understand the importance of reporting phishing emails.
Security Awareness Index is a blended score that includes all three metrics above for reporting convenience.
In addition to these metrics, a few tools can be deployed to help manage this program, such as:
Phishing simulation platform to test employees on their phishing knowledge
Reporting button in email client to allow staff to report phishing emails in one click
Fortra’s Suspicious Email Analysis tool to detect, analyze, and mitigate common email threats
Correcting Unsafe Online Behaviors Through Remedial Training
Cybersecurity awareness training isn’t the same for everyone, and certain employees with different learning styles might require more attention than others. Remedial training is a flexible tool that can solve issues like repeat clickers and inattentive employees.
By delineating a clear training path with escalating consequences, your users will have a completely transparent outlook on the importance of cybersecurity at your company.
Access the cybersecurity awareness training kit to get resources curated to help you start or revamp your security training program.
