What is the best awareness platform?

There is currently a wide variety of awareness platforms on the market. This is a problem in any field. When there are many options to choose from, it’s common for doubts and insecurities to arise.

With this post, I will try to help you choose the best awareness platform for your organization.

The Best Awareness Platform

First of all, we must be clear that the ideal platform for one organization can be the worst decision for another.

What I mean is that there is no such thing as “the best platform” in general. What does exist is the best platform for your specific organization.

To find it, you first need to clearly define what you want an awareness platform for.

Generally, the most common objectives are:

• Manage social engineering
• Create and maintain a secure culture
• Comply with internal and external regulations

Next, we will analyze each objective and what you should consider when choosing a platform so you can achieve them easily and effectively.

Manage Social Engineering

If one of your objectives is to manage the risk of social engineering, what you need is

• To know the current risk level
• To bring it to an acceptable level

Know the Current Risk Level

To know your organization’s risk level against social engineering, you need to simulate different types of attacks (Phishing, Ransomware, Smishing, USB Drop, etc.) and measure your users’ behavior.

With this in mind, you need a platform that:

• Has a wide range of social engineering simulation tools
• Allows reliable results through the detection of false positives

Bring It to an Acceptable Level

To reduce your organization’s risk level against social engineering, you need to carry out awareness actions.

Ideally, you would have a platform that centralizes simulation and awareness actions. This way, management will be simpler, and you will have correlation reports to demonstrate the effectiveness of your actions.

Create and Maintain a Secure Culture

To successfully create and maintain a secure culture, you will need a continuous awareness process. Through this process, you will ensure that your users develop safe behaviors.

The main thing for this is to provide suitable content for them and have various means to do so, in order to achieve the appropriate level of engagement.

With this in mind, keep in mind that the chosen platform should have:

• A quality content catalog, localized and 100% customizable
• Multiple awareness tools to reach your entire audience

And speaking of engagement, it is practically mandatory that the platform be adaptable to the organizational style and allow configuring a corporate email for all communications sent to users.

Comply with Internal and External Regulations

Complying with a regulation can be:

• Very simple
• Extremely complicated

We all prefer the first option, and for that, we need a platform that has:

• Ready-to-deliver audit logs
• Audit log protection system for normal and administrative users
• Automatic awareness program
• Easy management of users and groups

If all of this comes within a specific component of regulatory, policy, and procedure management, even better.

Extra Considerations

Manufacturer Proximity

Something that is not always taken into account, but is really important, is the proximity to the manufacturer.

If possible, try to find a platform whose technical team is always available to provide you with good local support service, in your same time zone and language.

Having a direct and local contact is really important so you can resolve any difficulties you have with the chosen platform.

Believe me, you don’t want to be in the middle of a problem and have to go through multiple automated filters and wait hours or days to finally speak to someone, and have that person speak a different language!

Artificial Intelligence

Nowadays, artificial intelligence is everywhere. In many cases, it’s forced by marketing. Saying you use artificial intelligence or machine learning makes you look better and more attractive.

Be careful with this. Think objectively about what all this would serve according to the objectives you defined.

Look for automation and assistance, but in moderation. Remember that you are dealing with people, seeking the development of safe habits, and you are doing all this on behalf of your own security area.

Final Thoughts

I hope this post helps clarify the points to consider when selecting an awareness platform.

Remember, the most important thing is that you can achieve your objectives comfortably and effectively.

That’s why, don’t rely too much on comparisons or generic reports. Look for what is best for your organization.