What is Security Awareness?

Security awareness addresses the human side of cybersecurity by preparing individuals to recognize and respond to social engineering tactics and manipulation techniques that technology alone can't stop. It focuses on educating employees, contractors, vendors, and stakeholders to recognize and respond to threats like phishing, social engineering, and other human-targeted attacks.

According to the 2024 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, the median time for a user to click a malicious link is just 21 seconds. In many cases, sensitive data is entered within the next 28 seconds, meaning a phishing attack can lead to full compromise in under one minute.

This highlights the critical need for engaging, targeted, and behavior-driven security awareness training. Empowering people with the right knowledge and tools helps reduce risk, prevent incidents, and strengthen overall cyber resilience.

Why is Security Awareness Important?

Even the most advanced security technologies can be bypassed if people aren't trained to recognize threats. Without security awareness training, employees and other users often become easy targets for attacks like phishing, ransomware, and social engineering—putting the entire organization at risk.

Benefits of effective security awareness training:

• Enhances cyber resilience by turning users into a proactive line of defense
• Reduces security incidents and the high costs of breaches, downtime, and recovery
• Improves phishing detection and reporting, lowering the success rate of attacks
• Supports compliance with key regulations such as GDPR, ISO 27001, and HIPAA

Core Objectives of Security Awareness

A well-designed security awareness program should:

• Educate users on common cyber threats, such as phishing, malware, and social engineering
• Encourage secure habits and informed decision-making to reduce human error
• Foster a security-first culture across all levels of the organization
• Support compliance with international standards and regulatory requirements

The Role of Employees & Executives

Building a strong security culture requires commitment at every level of the organization—from frontline staff to top leadership.

Employees are often the first target in cyber attacks, making their awareness and day-to-day decisions critical to organizational security.

Executives play a key role in driving success by setting the tone from the top—prioritizing security, leading by example, and ensuring adequate resources and support for ongoing training initiatives.

How to Build an Effective Security Awareness Program

An effective security awareness program must do more than check compliance boxes—it should deliver targeted, role-specific training that adapts to evolving threats and user behavior, creating lasting behavioral change across the organization.

Let’s take a closer look at what it takes to build a successful program.

Customize training by role and risk level

Tailor content to specific departments, job functions, and threat exposure. For example, finance teams should be trained on invoice fraud, while IT teams need to understand technical exploitation risks.

Include everyone with access to systems and data

Extend training beyond full-time employees to include vendors, contractors, and third-party partners who interact with your infrastructure or handle sensitive information.

Incorporate modern, engaging training methods

Use a mix of gamified learning, realistic phishing simulations, and microlearning modules to keep training interactive, relevant, and easy to retain—especially in fast-paced work environments.

Who Owns Security Awareness in an Organization?

Ownership of security awareness varies by organization size and structure.

In large enterprises, dedicated roles such as Security Awareness Managers or Security Behavior and Culture Managers typically lead these programs, often within the IT security or Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) teams.

In small to mid-sized businesses, the responsibility often falls to cross-functional teams, including HR, IT managers, and security leads.

Some organizations choose to outsource their programs to managed security service providers like Keepnet, ensuring expert-led, fully managed, and scalable training solutions.

Security Awareness for Different Sectors

Industries like finance, healthcare, energy, and government face unique cybersecurity threats and strict regulatory demands. Security awareness programs must be adapted to each sector’s specific risks, compliance standards, and operational context.

• Finance: Targeted by phishing, fraud, and insider threats. Training should focus on data protection, fraud prevention, and compliance with PCI DSS, SOX, and GLBA.
• Healthcare: High risk of data breaches and ransomware. Programs must cover PHI protection, secure communication, and compliance with HIPAA and GDPR.
• Energy & Utilities: Vulnerable to nation-state and infrastructure attacks. Training should address OT security, physical access risks, and NERC CIP compliance.
• Government & Public Sector: Frequent targets of espionage and ransomware. Programs must align with NIST, FISMA, and ISO 27001, with emphasis on handling classified and citizen data securely.

Measuring Security Awareness: Key Metrics & Reporting

Measuring performance is the first step toward improvement—without clear metrics, enhancing your security awareness training becomes guesswork. By tracking meaningful data points, organizations can assess training effectiveness and strengthen their overall cyber resilience.

Core Training Metrics

• Completion Rates: Percentage of employees who finish assigned training.
• Phishing Click Rates: Number of users clicking on simulated phishing emails.
• Exam Scores: Test results indicating how well users retain key concepts.
• Engagement Levels: Degree of user interaction with the training material.

Outcome-Focused Metrics for Real Impact

• Repeat Offenders: Users who fail phishing simulations multiple times.
• Phishing Susceptibility Rate: Share of users who fall for phishing attacks.
• Phishing Dwell Time: How long it takes employees to report or respond to a phishing threat.

For a deeper dive into how to track, analyze, and act on these metrics, check out Keepnet’s article: What are the Metrics for Evaluating Security Awareness Efforts.

Common Challenges in Security Awareness

Many security awareness programs fall short due to poor engagement and lack of real behavioral change. Common challenges include:

• Generic, one-size-fits-all training that doesn’t resonate with users
• Low participation and retention, leading to limited impact
• Knowledge-behavior gap, where users understand risks but still act insecurely

How to overcome these challenges

To improve the effectiveness of your security awareness program and drive real behavior change, consider the following strategies:

• Segment your audience – Tailor content to departments, roles, and risk levels
• Use hyper-personalized training – Deliver relevant, contextual content to boost engagement
• Adopt microlearning – Break content into short, digestible sessions for better retention
• Provide role-based education – Align training with users’ specific responsibilities
• Apply behavior-based methods – Focus on influencing actions, not just awareness
• Engage through multiple channels – Reinforce learning via email, LMS, chat, and in-app prompts

By combining these strategies, organizations can move beyond awareness and build a true security-first culture.

To discover how to create a hyper-personalized, AI-powered security awareness program, read Keepnet’s guide: How to Create a Security Awareness Program?

Security Awareness: Key Training Areas & Best Practices

An effective security awareness program should cover a wide range of threat types while using modern, engaging methods that influence real behavior change. Below is a breakdown of what to train on and how to deliver that training effectively:

Table 1: Key Training Categories and Methods

Most Effective Training Methods

To maximize impact, security awareness programs should go beyond basic instruction and use methods that drive real engagement and behavior change:

• Hyper-personalized training – Adapted to each employee’s risk profile and behavior patterns
• Behavior-based training – Designed to shift habits, not just deliver information
• Role-based training – Targeted learning that reflects job-specific risks
• Nudging – Subtle, well-timed prompts to reinforce secure actions in daily workflows
• Gamification – Interactive challenges and rewards that increase engagement and retention

Keepnet Security Awareness Program

Keepnet’s Security Awareness Training adapts to your team’s cybersecurity maturity, risk levels, and behaviors—offering personalized content instead of generic modules.

Designed to foster a security-first culture, the program aligns your teams around proactive threat detection and response.

With 2,100+ training materials from 15+ global providers in 36+ languages, it delivers inclusive, localized content for diverse teams.

How It Works – 4 Key Steps

Keepnet’s program follows a structured approach that drives continuous improvement and lasting behavioral change.

1. Assess Awareness: Establish a baseline using surveys and phishing simulations.
2. Train Effectively: Deliver dynamic, gamified training based on behavioral science.
3. Promote Reporting: Encourage real-time phishing reports to boost engagement.
4. Gain Insights: Measure impact with executive dashboards and performance metrics.

Whether launching or scaling your program, Keepnet helps build a resilient, human-centric security culture with ease.

Why Security Awareness Training Matters

Security awareness training is a must—not just for compliance with regulations like ISO 27001, GDPR, CCPA, and HIPAA, but to actively protect against threats like phishing, ransomware, and insider risks. Without it, employees remain the weakest link, increasing the risk of data breaches and financial loss.

Keepnet’s Human Risk Management Platform goes beyond basic compliance, building a security-first culture, reducing incidents, and helping lower cyber insurance premiums through measurable risk reduction.

To explore the compliance side of security awareness in more depth, check out Keepnet’s guide on Security Awareness Compliance: Requirements, Frameworks, and Best Practices.