For the Past Year, Designed Privacy has been working to integrate behavior design into the cyber awareness process. Through a series of testing, we have created a CyberAwareness Program which we are launching this Fall. The Program not only shows strong results in reducing phish susceptibility, the behaviors it’s designed to create show the potential to both mitigate digital disinformation efforts and get people to collaborate on reinforcing secure behaviors, whether in the office, at home or with clients and vendors.
In addition, we are extremely pleased to have process and results published by the Peace Innovation Lab at Stanford.
After a year of testing three things are clear:
1). Cyber awareness without behavior change is a waste of time, money and energy;
2). Behavior changes occurs through a combination of ease, prompting and positive reinforcement. People are more apt to change behaviors when they see a positive WIIFM.
3). Behavior-designed cyber awareness not only leads to reduced phish susceptibility, but it also has the potential to lead to better organizational decision making, especially as we are relying more and more on digital information to make those decisions.
In a world of phishing, online scams, deepfake video and content, and the weaponization of social media, we all need to develop behaviors to help us determine what is real and what is not if we want to be secure, make sound decisions and feel that we still have the space where our choices are our own.
Please read the Stanford Peace Innovation Lab article here.
