Designing Security Awareness Programs

This unit advances foundational security awareness knowledge into practical program design and early implementation planning. Students learn to align awareness initiatives with compliance and business needs, plan phishing and gamification elements, engage stakeholders, and define metrics and communications to measure effectiveness.

Learning Objectives

• Analyze organizational requirements, compliance constraints, and approval processes to produce a documented scope and approvals checklist for a security awareness program.
• Design a phishing and awareness program plan that sets measurable goals, selects appropriate gamification attributes, and incorporates mitigations for business email compromise and mobile device risks.
• Evaluate stakeholder motivations, communication channels, and engagement tactics to develop a stakeholder engagement and communications calendar with a metrics collection framework.
• Apply metrics- and accounting-based methods to measure and report program effectiveness (including Day 0 and engagement metrics) and justify program adjustments based on data and stakeholder feedback.