The Awareness Practitioners

Ahead of the SANS Security Awareness and Culture Summit at Caesars Palace, I sat down with Rachael, global PMM and head of marketing for SANS Digital, to find out what's actually waiting for you there. We talk about the keynote on espionage, trust and the people around you, what it's like when three hundred and fifty security awareness professionals fill one room, and why Rachael reckons t...

Your awareness programme might have a brand. It might not. But what if people actually talked about it? In this episode I look at what Octopus Energy did in a low-interest category that everyone hated, and why it maps directly onto the security awareness problem. We cover the von Restorff effect, the visual and tonal dialect that awareness programmes have built collectively over years, and what ge...

You can have the data, the evidence, the results. And still watch it change nothing. In 1847, Ignaz Semmelweis worked out why mothers were dying in a Vienna maternity ward. He proved it. He cut the death rate to almost zero. And the medical establishment turned its back on him. He was right about everything, and he still lost. This episode is about why being right is the start of the job, not the...

Nobody runs out of their house to thank a traffic warden. They are walking down the street doing a job most people would actually agree with, but every single interaction they have lands at the worst moment of somebody's week. Sound familiar? In this episode of The Awareness Practitioners, Ant looks at the perception of security teams and the uncomfortable truth that most of us have never sat down...

Nearly a thousand people were using a tool that legal wanted to block. Instead of blocking it, we asked why they were all using it in the first place. That question changed everything. In this episode, I take a concept from urban planning called desire paths and apply it to security awareness. A desire path is the shortcut worn into the grass where people ignore the official route and walk where i...

Oli Inkley started on the Waitrose shop floor. Four and a half years later, he's starting a new adventure in security awareness and culture at Marks and Spencer. In this episode, Oli talks about how he went from managing retail teams and night shifts to building champions programmes, learning to speak the language of engineers, and figuring out what actually works when every organisation does...

World Password Day doesn't work. Most of us in security awareness know that. But that doesn't mean you should stop using it. In this episode I break down where World Password Day actually came from, why it became one of the most recognised awareness dates in cybersecurity, and why the advice most people share on it is now outdated. I also tell you the story of Grandparents Day and what it teaches...