How to Build an Effective Cybersecurity Awareness Program in Your Company

In the era of AI, sectors like marketing, software development, medicine etc., have greatly benefit from this new technology. However, unethical actors like cybercriminals have also taken advantage of it. The AI enhanced their operations, especially in phishing attacks.

Now with AI, they can copy voices to to pose as people in high positions or create videos with false propaganda and the expectation is that in a few years is nearly impossible recognize what is real and what is made by AI.

But not all is lost. despite the challenges of identifying what is real, it is still possible to verify the authenticity of content. However, to achieve this, an effective cybersecurity awareness program is essential.

What you will see in this article:

1. Common Mistakes in Cyber Awareness Campaigns

2. Principles of an Effective Awareness Program

3. Practical Steps to Build Awareness in Your Company

4. Conclusion

Common Mistakes in Cyber Awareness Campaigns

Run Cyber Awareness Campaigns as a once- or twice-a-year compliance exercise instead instead of an ongoing program.

This is the most common mistake: awareness campaigns must be part of a continuous program to be truly effective. The world of cyber threats is dynamic, new techniques and attacks appear all the time, you can’t keep employees informed about the latest risks if you run campaigns only once or twice a year. These programs should be conducted at least monthly to ensure that the employee is prepared to recognize and respond to the latest threats.

Awareness Campaigns with too much technical jargon

The objective of an awareness campaigns is to reach employees from different departments. That’s why it is necessary to be careful with the use of technical jargon. Common and well-known terms for those of us in the cybersecurity field as DDoS, Phishing, Man-in-the-Middle, zero-day exploit, or DNS poisoning, can make non-technical employees confused and disengaged. To prevent this, avoid technical terms and instead use analogies or stories to make the concepts stick. For example, you can explain DDoS as an attack similar to a person that receives several requests from different people and ends up feeling overwhelmed.

One-Size-Fits-All Content

Awareness initiatives must be guided by the department, roles, and risks. Different departments have different roles and face different risks, the content of the training must be appropriate for the department in which the campaign will be run.

For example, for the executive team, the focus should be on threats like:

• Whaling (phishing targeted at high-level executives);

• BEC scams (using urgency and authority to manipulate); and

• Espionage and ransomware.

On the other hand, for HR departments, the focus should be on:

• Phishing;

• Malware in attachments; and

• Data theft.

Principles of an Effective Awareness Program

Clarity and objectivity

An effective message must be clear and objective. As previously mentioned, technical jargon and overly complex explanations, just makes it harder for the general public to understand.

Focus on behavior, not just information

Human error is not caused only by lack of information, but also by behavior. A common example of harmful behavior is leaving your office computer unlocked or allowing others to use your credentials.

Continuous repetition and reinforcement

No one can learn a subject by studying it just once; learning requires repetition and reinforcement.

Practical Steps to Build Awareness in Your Company

Assess the current awareness maturity level.

It is necessary to have an accurate view of the current awareness maturity level, to identify the key areas that need to be addressed. For that, you can use the metrics like:

• Most frequent attacks

• Questionnaires

• Simulations

Create engaging content

Short videos, quizzes, and real-life cases are excellent to engage and keep this initiative from turning into just another boring meeting.

TIP: Use reference materials from standards such as ISO/IEC 27001 and NIST to guide the creation of content and policies.

Promote regular training sessions.

As previously mentioned, learning is a process, so it is essential to have regular training sessions to reinforce the knowledge.

Reward good security practices

Good security practices need to be encouraged, and one of the best means for that is implement a reward program. Rewarding good practices helps embed cybersecurity into the organizational culture, making it part of employees’ daily routines rather than merely a compliance checkbox. To evaluate employee performance for this purpose, you can use the following metrics:

• Individual exams at the end of training session

• Individual performance in simulations

• Achieving reduction targets in cyber incidents

Involve leadership and ensure their commitment.

Leaders set the tone for the rest of the organization. When leadership actively participates and supports awareness initiatives, it sends a strong message that cybersecurity is a shared responsibility.

Evaluate effectiveness using metrics

After the campaign is finished, you must re-evaluate the current level of awareness, preferably using the same metrics used in “Assess the current awareness maturity level”, to maintain standardization. This allows for comparisons and measuring real progress.

Collect and incorporate employee feedback.

Employee feedback is crucial to evaluate the effectiveness of the awareness campaign. Employee feedback not only helps measure effectiveness, but also reveals gaps in communication or content format preferences. Prioritize feedback by open questions instead of multiple-choice and closed-ended. These questions can address topics like type of content, frequency of training, format (video, text, quiz).

Continuously review and adjust the program.

No program will be perfect, but more important than that is continuous improvement. Review and adjust the program constantly, implementing the employee feedback, covering the latest threats and the most common cyber attacks that the company faces.

Conclusion

Cybersecurity is not just about firewalls and tools — it's about people. Empowering employees to recognize threats and act securely is one of the most effective defenses any organization can have.

With the right approach, awareness becomes culture — and culture becomes protection.