I’ve been doing computer security for over 34 years and in that time, I haven’t seen a lot of game-changing products.
What I have seen is a lot of new products that claimed to be game-changers, but most ended up being slightly different variations of existing products with a lot of new marketing hype. How many times can I read “Next Generation”, “AI-Enabled”, or “Zero-Trust-Enabled” slapped on the same old tired products and not become a bit of a cybersecurity curmudgeon?
Imagine my surprise to learn more about KnowBe4’s new SecurityCoach product. Although I admit I have more than a little room to be considered biased, SecurityCoach is a brand new product in a brand new market category. The category is known as Human Detection and Response (HDR).
SecurityCoach takes alerts from your existing integrated cybersecurity products (e.g., Cisco, CrowdStrike, Cylance, Microsoft Windows Defender ATP, Zscaler, etc.) and sends immediate coaching to end-users who have violated cybersecurity policy. For example, imagine the employee has visited a high risk web site or tried to open a document containing malware. In the past, your cybersecurity product would have likely blocked the action and maybe, in the minority of cases, sent a quick warning about the blocked action.
KnowBe4’s SecurityCoach product allows not only an additional message to be sent (via Microsoft Teams, Slack, or email), but allows that message to contain relevant text and graphical content. You can send tailored education right where it is needed to the employees who need it.
Here are five reasons why KnowBe4’s SecurityCoach is a product you want to have.
1. Right Education Where Needed
One of the trickiest parts of security awareness training is getting the right education to the right people and not overly burdening your more cybersecurity-aware people.
You’ll always have employees who almost never click on any phishing attack or violate any cybersecurity policy and employees who click on every phishing email and malware attack. It’s always been a challenge on how to reach the latter, click-on-everything employees with targeted education. SecurityCoach allows you to do that. Only the employees who are actively violating cybersecurity policy, creating alerts, are given additional educational nudges. People who never violate cybersecurity policy are not bothered with unnecessary education (beyond what you give all employees to keep them appropriately cyber aware about the latest threats).
2. Quick Response Education
Users learn some of the cybersecurity lessons immediately after they have made a bad cybersecurity decision. Education given immediately after an error is far more likely to be learned and remembered than when that same education is given weeks later. Timeliness matters.
KnowBe4’s SecurityCoach can include any cybersecurity violation your integrated security stack products detect. It’s the right education sent to the right people quickly. People learn better when you call out their mistakes immediately and constructively after they make them.
SecurityCoach helps ensure that your users are appropriately nudged towards the right security behavior and teaches them in real-time.
Examples of SecurityTips sent in response to a variety of risky security behaviors.
3. Leverages Existing Cybersecurity Products
SecurityCoach turns any of your existing integrated products into teaching opportunities. Your existing security stack products can likely block potentially malicious behavior and possibly send a short alert message to users notifying them about the block. SecurityCoach allows each detected event to become a full-blown education opportunity. For example, if your cybersecurity product blocks a malware download, at best all it can do is tell the user of the blocked download. SecurityCoach allows you to send real-time coaching notifications, called SecurityTips, telling them why it’s important that they not try to open and download unexpected content and the risk it is to the organization.
4. Management Can See Where More Training Is Needed
For example, suppose a dozen employees get tricked into clicking on an email phishing link that attempts to capture the employee’s logon credentials, but it’s caught and prevented by your integrated cybersecurity product. Further, suppose the phishing campaign appears to be directed at high-risk employees and originates from a particular cyber adversary in a foreign country. Your existing endpoint protection throws off alerts that are ingested by SecurityCoach, which will immediately coach all users that fell for this attack with a relevant SecurityTip.
SecurityCoach’s built-in dashboard provides an overall summary of coaching campaigns, detection rules and detected security events. The detailed reports provide insights into your organization's security risks and help track trends in your users' risky activity over time, showing you and your managers what training topics could use more focus. In this way, SecurityCoach insights can help measurably reduce risk while building a mature security culture in less time.
5. Improves Your Security Culture and Human Firewall
According to the 2022 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, the human factor is involved in 82% of malicious breaches. SecurityCoach puts another tool in your defense-in-depth arsenal to target the deficiencies in your existing Human Firewall to create a stronger culture of healthy security awareness.
If most hacker and malware attacks occur because of human behavior, any tool that helps you improve that behavior is welcomed. KnowBe4’s SecurityCoach is a brand new product in a new category tackling the biggest cybersecurity challenge of our time with a unique strategy to put the education exactly where it is needed when it is needed to only those who need it.
