User Education & Awareness

VigilancePro uniquely provides transparent and effective enforcement of a company’s security policies based on the understanding that the majority of data losses are unintentional and due to a lack of security awareness and education. According to research around 77% of leaks are the result of the actions of undisciplined employees.

In combination with Security Awareness programs, mandated by standards including PCI DSS and ISO 27001, VigilancePro can keep users on the ‘path of acceptable use’, driving and promoting positive user behaviour around the secure handling of confidential information.

Initially in response to specific actions - such as copying a file to a removable drive, or attaching a key financial spreadsheet to an email - warning dialog boxes can be presented to the user reminding them of their obligations when handling sensitive or regulated information and asking the simple question ‘Are you sure?’. This approach has a significant impact on unintentional data loss.

Dialog boxes can be customised with text, logos, icons and links to Intranet sites containing relevant policy documentation. Dialog boxes can also allow the user to input a free text description of a valid business reason for a particular action, minimising operational impact. The activity is logged – along with the justification - but not prevented.

These features provide ‘user mentoring’, specifically designed to reinforce user awareness training, before moving to more stringent blocking and prevention of actions. On screen alerts and prompts provide softer ‘learn as you work’ user education. The ability to present the user with multiple choices in response to particular actions also provides a non-intrusive powerful feedback mechanism for ongoing policy development.

Through the use of well-designed dialog boxes linked to security policy, user behaviour is modified over a relatively short period of time, often in as little as 72 hours. User awareness and education, combined with accountability and protection, has a rapid and profound effect on an organisation’s overall security posture.

Solution Highlights:

• Instant real-time security education linked to actual user actions
• Fully customisable dialog boxes
• Rapid improvement in overall security awareness
• Reduction in unintentional security breaches
• Compliance with the user training requirements of standards such as ISO 27001 – training is continuous
• Least restrictive intervention – actions can be justified and logged, but not prevented – minimising operation impact
• Invaluable source of user feedback - enabling policy tuning and reduced risk
• Users are both accountable and protected – assisting in policy understanding and acceptance