About ANG
ANG is a Dutch consulting firm specializing in supporting local governments. They provide expert advice and assistance to provinces and municipalities on matters such as taxes, personnel, legal services, and more. The company employs a team of 70 professionals.
We spoke to Ed van den Boom (CIO and partner) and Nigel Brouwers (system administrator) about how ANG uses Guardey to improve the organization’s security awareness and to comply with the Dutch BIO directive.
Challenge: Create security awareness and comply with the BIO norm
“Many organizations aiming to improve security awareness focus heavily on technology and policies,” says Ed. “However, the biggest risk of a data breach always lies with the human factor. Before adopting Guardey, we were searching for a way to cultivate a culture of security awareness. I wanted everyone in the organization to understand the importance of privacy, the BIO directive, and GDPR. I realized that a yearly course wouldn’t be enough—we needed a training solution that could keep everyone consistently engaged and aware throughout the year.”
Nigel continues: “The BIO directive requires us to prove that our entire organization is actively working on becoming more aware of security risks. To comply with this directive, we needed a training solution that could prove all our employees were participating and actively learning.”
Solution: Guardey’s gamified security awareness training
ANG’s IT partner TvP told them about Guardey’s gamified security awareness training. Nigel: “I immediately liked the fact that Guardey uses gamification to keep users engaged. Personally, I know it’s always easier to motivate myself when I can score points and compete on a leaderboard. I’m always more driven if I get to compete.”
Nigel continues: “I also appreciate that Guardey doesn’t require a lot of time from users. You only need a bout 3 to 5 minutes to take on a weekly challenge. The first challenges are fairly easy, and as you go along, the training gets more difficult.”
ANG uses various strategies to provide its employees with additional motivation. “During our Christmas event, we want to show the leaderboard and celebrate the best performers. We’re also planning on handing out some presents as an extra incentive,” says Nigel. “Employees are also part of teams. If somebody performs well, but another team member fails to participate to the best of their ability, it hurts the team score. This is a nice way to get team members to motivate each other to give it their best.”
Phishing simulations
Aside from security awareness training, Guardey also offers a phishing simulation module and a spear phishing simulation service. To establish a baseline before introducing Guardey to ANG’s employees, the ANG team decided to launch a phishing simulation in collaboration with Guardey.
Ed: “The phishing results made it clear that there was work to be done to improve phishing awareness. If we get our people to recognize and report more phishing incidents, we can take action and keep damages to a minimum. From now on, we want to perform a phishing simulation twice a year with Guardey, to see if this improves.”
Result: Security awareness has tangibly improved and ANG is BIO-compliant
After a few months, ANG already notices the first positive effects from using Guardey. “I’ve noticed that employees are more aware than before,” says Nigel. “I regularly get questions about emails or text messages that our employees don’t fully trust. We also have activated the Microsoft ‘Report Phishing’ plugin, which is used way more often than before.”
Reporting and compliance
The BIO directive requires that training participation and performance is constantly tracked. “We can clearly see which employees are performing well during training,” says Nigel. “I currently have a good sense of the overall awareness level, both on team level and individually. I pay close attention to how employees score for specific topics. If somebody doesn’t score well on, say, password policy, I now know that I have to talk to that person. This is very helpful.”
Ed and Nigel trust that Guardey will help ANG comply with the BIO directive’s security awareness requirement. “We recently underwent a pre-audit for BIO compliance that included an evaluation of Guardey, and it received full approval.”
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