Cybersecurity training is essential to any organization’s defense against cyber-attacks—the more people who understand how to spot and protect themselves from these threats, the better. But a lot of cyber security training feels like it was written by a robot: dry, dull, and not very memorable. Boring training is a problem. If your employees don’t learn anything from your cybersecurity training, then it doesn’t matter how much of it you give them.
The solution is to focus on making the material more interesting and engaging for your audience.
The problem is that most cybersecurity training materials are written by people who haven’t spent much time learning about the human brain. The result of that shortcoming is that it takes a lot of effort for learners to get through even one module—and then they forget what they learned before they’ve had time to apply it in the real world.
But what if it didn’t have to be that way? What if we could make cyber security training fun & engaging? What if we could make it memorable? What if we could make it so interesting that people actually look forward to their training?
Here are a few tips for creating great cybersecurity training materials:
Humor can make Cybersecurity Training memorable – Use humor wherever possible in your content. It will help keep people engaged, and it will help them remember what they learned long after they’ve left your site or app. Humor can also illustrate concepts that might otherwise be difficult to understand. For example, let’s say you’re trying to explain how a particular type of malware works. People may have trouble understanding what is happening if you just describe it in plain English. But if you use humor (or even some silly animation) to show them what’s going on, they’ll be able to follow along much more easily.
Keep it short, one topic at a time – Don’t try to cover too much at once. Break down your content into bite-size pieces that you can tackle one at a time. Keeping training short will help keep your audience engaged and make it easier for them to remember what they’ve learned.
Make it interactive – Use videos, quizzes, and other interactive content to get people involved in what they are learning. Getting users involved will help them retain more information long after they’ve left your site or app.
Use stories – Personal stories can be a great way of making your content more exciting and engaging. If you want to use stories, make sure they are relevant to your audience and don’t stray from the topic at hand too much.
How do I measure success? – Make sure your users understand what they’ve just learned—and whether they feel they can apply it in real life—by asking open-ended questions throughout the training experience. Questions will help you gauge whether your users have learned what they came to learn and if they’re able to apply it.
Make it understandable for the average user – Keep jargon to a minimum, and use clear language so that even first-time users can understand what you’re saying.
Make it easy to use – If you can’t make your training experience easy for users to navigate and understand, they probably won’t stick around long enough to take anything away from it. Remember, you are not training cybersecurity experts. Your goal is to teach the basics of cybersecurity to regular users—people who are not IT specialists but need to know how to protect their systems from hackers. Make sure your training experience is easy for them to navigate and understand.
Remember, good cybersecurity training aims to ensure that our users have the skills to protect themselves on the Internet. It is especially important for people who are not experts in the field, such as regular users. We need to ensure that our training experience is easy for them to navigate and understand. They probably won’t stick around long enough to take anything away from it if it isn’t.
