You can’t protect your most crucial information, networks, and systems with technology alone. To minimize the risk of a data breach and keep confidential data out of the hands of hackers, you must invest in your most important line of defense: your employees, contractors, and third-party vendors.
Security awareness training is an essential component of successful cybersecurity. When you deploy targeted courses, quizzes, phishing simulations, and more, you’ll identify high-risk end users or roles, change unsafe online behavior that can leave data vulnerable to cyber-attacks, and promote a security-first mindset across your entire organization. Effective cybersecurity awareness training reinforces these behaviors and drives continuous improvement.
How Often Should You Do Security Awareness Training?
Security awareness training should occur at least annually, with quarterly microlearning refreshers for best results. The recommended frequency for security awareness training is a comprehensive onboarding course for new hires within their first 30 days, followed by quarterly refreshers and just-in-time modules triggered by risk events. Employees should complete cybersecurity training on at least an annual basis, with shorter cybersecurity awareness training updates every quarter to reinforce critical topics.
Phishing simulation exercises should be run monthly or at least quarterly to maintain vigilance without causing alert fatigue. The ideal interval for refresher security training is every three months, with additional refreshers immediately after policy changes, incidents, or audit findings. This cadence ensures security awareness training remains relevant and impactful across the organization.
How Does Security Awareness Training Work?
The best security awareness training programs are built on a data-driven, actionable strategy created by an organization’s CISO and other security leaders. Once this plan is finalized and related goals are set, security awareness initiatives are deployed, monitored, and optimized over time according to performance metrics and KPIs.
The pillars of strong security awareness training include:
How Do I Know If My Organization Needs Security Awareness Training?
All organizations, regardless of their size, sector, or head office location should be implementing security awareness training and sustained cybersecurity awareness training.
With a program in place, it’s easy to:
Change unsafe online behaviors
Reduce cyber risk
Meet compliance requirements
Attain your cybersecurity goals
Why Your Cybersecurity Awareness Level is Critical
With cyber attacks becoming increasingly common and complex worldwide, understanding your organization’s cybersecurity risk levels is more important than ever before. See how your phishing email click rates compare to your peers by industry, region, and more by downloading the latest Phishing Benchmark Global Report.
Get Started with Security Awareness Training
Fortra's Terranova Security makes it easy to build risk-based campaigns that feature the industry’s highest-quality training content and real-world phishing simulations, aligning with the ideal interval for refresher security training and ongoing cybersecurity awareness training.