With the vital importance of security awareness in modern organizations, many are implementing a dedicated team to implement, monitor, and adjust security awareness programs. In this article, I’ll provide a bit of guidance on the process.

Defining Goals for Your Security Awareness Team

The first step should be defining the goals of the team. What are the areas of focus for the team? Generally, they will include things like promoting a culture of security, identifying risks, mitigating risks, and training employees on security best practices as well as the risks that drive these best practices. The team should know what their mission is.

Next, you will need to identify the team members. Members will typically include security professionals (those who understand information and network security), Human Resources professionals, and managers or team leaders from various departments and groups. Assembling a cross-functional team is important because each member will bring insights not considered by the others.

Building a Cross-Functional Team for Effective Security Measures

Now that the team exists, they can create a plan of action. Should they develop policies related to security awareness? Will they deliver training materials and a training schedule or manage a team that performs this or outsource the training to a third-party with video training and, hopefully, evaluation testing to ensure comprehension and learning? Will they make recommendations on security best practices? Regardless of the answers to these and other questions, the team should have a plan of action. Otherwise, the meetings will devolve into chat sessions about security that go nowhere.

Finally, how will you measure the team’s effectiveness? Metrics such as incident rates, compliance with policies, employee engagement, and others can be used. Taking a baseline measurement before the team is formed and new measurements at regular intervals, you can measure the progress made by the team.

Forming a security awareness team is not as simple as choosing a few people and telling them to make sure employees are aware of security issues. Instead, a strategic process can result in an effective team that achieves measurable results.