We tested the 5 most fun security awareness training solutions

95% of all data breaches are caused by human error. From clicking phishing links to using weak passwords. That’s why training your employees to recognize cyber threats is more important than ever.

However, many organizations struggle to get their employees to attend those trainings, let alone have them pay attention and remember the information.

Why? Because most security awareness training is either long-winded, boring, outdated, and often all at the same time.

In this article, you’ll find 5 fun security awareness training solutions that will engage your users and eventually lead to behavior change. From long-term solutions to free one-offs.

Let’s dive in!

5 fun cyber security awareness training options

1. Guardey
2. Mobile escape room
3. Counterintelligence Trivia Twirl
4. Ninjio
5. The Weakest Link

1. Guardey

Guardey is a fun security awareness training solution based on gamification.

Users start a fictional business and grow its reputation and revenue stream by taking on weekly cyber security challenges. After each question in the challenge, they get feedback on their performance which helps them learn and retain information.

By doing a 3-minute challenge every week, Guardey users build up knowledge bit by bit over time. The average attention span is short and this solution fits right into a weekly schedule.

Guardey covers a wide range of cyber security topics and each challenge is put together in collaboration with educationalists and ethical hackers. In a leaderboard, users can see how they’re performing compared to their colleagues, which adds a nice element of competition. They can even earn badges.

By using the LMS (learning management system), admins can add personalized content that fit their team’s knowledge level and role.

Pros

• Weekly challenges for long-term security awareness and behavior change
• Gamification elements such as a leaderboard to increase engagement
• All content created with educationalists and ethical hackers

Cons

• It’s not free, but affordable and offers a 14-day free trial

Start a 14-day free Guardey trial

2. Mobile Escape Room

If you’re not looking for a long-term solution, but a one-off event to peak your staff’s interest in cyber security, a mobile escape room may be exactly what you’re looking for.

There are different variations of a mobile security awareness escape room. The example from the picture above is from a company in the Netherlands. The entire escape room is housed in a big truck that drives through the country to visit companies at their offices. Inside, employees are tasked with solving cyber security challenges to escape the room.

Pros

• Great way to get employees engaged
• Nice team-building exercise

Cons

• Not scaleable for large organizations
• Not effective for long-term security awareness

3. Counterintelligence Trivia Twirl

This option adds a nice spin (pun intended) on security awareness training online. After spinning the digital wheel, users land on a specific cyber security category and get a set of questions about it.

The questions in this game are well thought through. However, aside from spinning the wheel, there are no other gamification elements that make this solution engaging for users. With the limited number of questions, it’s also not a solution for long-term usage, but a nice quiz to send around the company.

Pros

• It’s free
• Spinning the wheel is a fun touch
• The cyber security questions are challenging

Cons

• Limited gamification elements
• Short-term solution

4. Ninjio

Ninjio has its own view on making cyber security awareness training fun. They believe in offering content in the form of cartoons. Each of their videos is 3-4 minutes long and created with — as they call it — Hollywood-style storytelling.

Ninjio uses an algorithm that indicates how well users are engaging with the video content to find out how vulnerable they are to social engineering. While the videos are well-produced, it doesn’t work for everybody. Watching videos is a passive activity, which is not always helpful in knowledge retention.

Ninjio’s pricing details are not available on their website. You’ll need to request a quote to find out how much it costs.

Pros

• Well-produced cartoons
• Long-term solution

Cons

• No transparent pricing
• Passive learning method

5. The Weakest Link

Another fun security awareness training game is called The Weakest Link. What we like about this one is that the questions are not too easy and the right topics are covered. It takes about an hour to go through all the material they have, which means it’s not a long-term solution, but a nice way to freshen up your memory.

After answering a question, you get feedback about your answer — also if it’s right. Direct feedback is a key part of gamification, which engages the user and increases knowledge retention.

Pros

• It’s free
• Instant feedback

Cons

• Limited gamification elements
• Short-term solution

What makes security awareness training fun?

Fun cyber security awareness activities can boost engagement and knowledge retention among your employees. The above training solutions have at least one of the following elements that make them fun to do.

Gamification

The most important element that can turn dull training into a fun exercise is adding gamification. In the past years, many popular apps have used gamification to get their users to take part in activities they would otherwise not (consistently) take part in.

With gamification, you simply add gaming elements to a non-gaming environment.

In security awareness training, Guardey offers gamification by adding a storyline, competition with colleagues, and even badges.

Personalization

A key element of making security awareness training fun is personalization. If an employee feels like the content in a training solution is irrelevant to their specific situation, it will most likely make them less engaged. And since nobody is alike, a one-size-fits-all approach is never as effective as personalized training.

With personalization, you can ensure that users see themselves in certain training situations, and therefore understand how these situations could also happen in real life.

Another benefit is that you can add extra layers of difficulty. An IT employee obviously can skip the more basic questions and get more in-depth content than an average employee.

Short

Modern attention spans are shorter than ever. Putting your employees through day-long training in a classroom simply doesn’t work in this day and age. After a week, they will have forgotten 90% of what they have learned — if they even retain any information at all.

No matter how fun and engaging the training method, it will always be more effective when chopped into bite-sized lessons. A solution like Guardey, which offers weekly 3-minute challenges, will be able to keep your team’s attention as long as it needs to be kept.

Fun cyber security awareness activities boost knowledge retention

If you’re looking to train your employees on cyber security, make sure to make the experience as fun as possible. From weekly games to mobile escape rooms, there is a wide variety of activities you can organize to make sure your employees are enabled to work safely.

If long-term behavior change and compliance is your goal, consider using Guardey. Guardey is a fun security awareness training provider that offers engaging training in weekly bite-sized challenges. You can try it out for free.

Don’t let hackers outsmart you. Start a 14-day free Guardey trial.