About the municipality of Oost Gelre
Oost Gelre is a Dutch municipality near the eastern border with Germany. With over 250 employees, it serves a community of 30,000 residents.
We spoke with Thys te Poele, privacy officer and CISO, about how the municipality of Oost Gelre uses Guardey to create security awareness among a diverse staff and comply with the Dutch BIO directive.
Challenge: Achieve BIO-compliance and create awareness
As a Dutch municipality, Oost Gelre must comply with the BIO standard (Baseline Informatiebeveiliging Overheid Cybersecurity). Thys: “The BIO requires employee training, but gives us flexibility in choosing our approach. While the guidelines are quite flexible, we wanted to go beyond mere compliance. Our priority was ensuring everyone understands the value of the information we handle.”
“I’ve noticed that some employees underestimate the importance of information security,” Thys continues. “They may not realize how easily they can become targets for cybercriminals or assume they’ll always recognize a threat when they see one. That’s why I believe regular training is essential to ensure everyone stays informed and prepared.”
Solution: Weekly challenges for continuous security awareness
In his search for the right training solution, Thys focused on the following key requirements:
- Frequent, bite-sized training instead of a single annual course
- Accessible content suitable for a diverse staff, ranging from 18 to 70 years old
- An engaging and inviting experience to encourage participation
- Comprehensive coverage of various security awareness topics
- Up-to-date content on modern threats, including AI-driven risks
“I didn’t want a one-off course or town hall meetings. I was convinced that we needed frequent training that didn’t take too much of our employees’ time. That’s how Guardey came into the picture,” says Thys.
With Guardey, employees of the municipality of Oost Gelre engage in a weekly security awareness challenge that takes just three minutes to complete. These challenges cover a broad range of security topics, keeping employees informed and vigilant. Each user begins their journey by managing their own fictional municipality within Guardey. By performing well in challenges, they earn points that help grow their town’s population and climb the leaderboard. This gamified approach adds an engaging layer of friendly competition, making security training both fun and effective.
The municipality Oost Gelre is also going to start using Guardey’s special training program that was created especially for Dutch municipalities. “Guardey’s regular training program revolves around regular companies. Placing security awareness in the context of a municipality is key so that our users can relate to the content,” says Thys.
Results: Friendly competition among colleagues
“Our goal isn’t to turn employees into cybersecurity experts,” says Thys. “We simply want them to be aware of security threats. Since we started using Guardey, I regularly get questions about our own security policies. And that’s exactly what I wanted. Guardey has to start an internal dialogue.”
“Before we started, many colleagues were sceptical. But so far, we’ve seen promising results,” says Thys. “Some colleagues are very competitive and enjoy using Guardey. They participate weekly and compare their scores to others to see how they are doing. Some of the managers are among the fanatics, which helps to get everybody else on board. Employees of all ages, from the youngest to the oldest, are excited about Guardey, which is clear proof to me that we should keep using it.”
A small group of employees requires a little more effort to get on board, according to Thys. “At the end of the day, it’s impossible to get every single person excited about security awareness training. When introducing Guardey, I did my best to find allies in every department, hoping the adoption would organically spread throughout the organization. This worked well, but you can’t win them all right away.”
Guardey has proven to be low-maintenance for Gemeente Oost Gelre. “I spend more time doing the Guardey challenges than being an admin,” says Thys. “New users automatically get added to Guardey and old users automatically get deleted. Every Tuesday, our users get an email about the weekly challenge. I only expect to spend more time on Guardey once we start adding our own custom training content, which we plan to do in the future.”
Don’t let hackers outsmart you
Make sure your employees are prepared to recognize security threats with Guardey. Start your 14-day free trial today.
