At KnowBe4, we’ve had some exciting news on the horizon for some time now that we’re thrilled to share with you – we’ve created a new research arm called KnowBe4 Research. When we acquired CLTRe, a research-based organization, last year, we knew that our research capabilities would be greatly enhanced. Given that we also have several former research analysts on staff, developing the KnowBe4 Research brand makes perfect sense as we look to position KnowBe4 for the future. The mission of KnowBe4 Research is to provide IT and security leaders like you with high quality, vendor neutral data-driven insights related to cybersecurity and the human element.
Both KnowBe4 and CLTRe were founded because the human element of security awareness was underserved. The “Security Culture Survey” is CLTRe’s secret sauce and is the first project to come out of KnowBe4 Research. With this survey, we aim to provide the most comprehensive study of cybersecurity culture-related data. No other organization has taken this unique approach to evaluating security culture using seven different dimensions across multiple industries.
The 2020 “Security Culture Survey”, is comprised of data collected from 120,050 employees in 1,107 organizations across 24 countries. A total of 17 industry sectors were examined in detail. As you read through the results of the report, you’ll find a large gap between the best performers and the poor performers when it comes to security culture. The best performers were from Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance and the worst performers were from Education, Transportation and Energy & Utilities.
Security culture varies across industries. In the industry comparison report, you’ll note that all industries were compared according to their security culture scores and across each of the seven dimensions (Attitudes, Behaviors, Cognition, Communication, Compliance, Norms and Responsibilities) of security culture.
At the end of the day, the data found that all industries need to improve when it comes to security culture. The data shows that no industry (even the highest scoring industries) should be overly pleased with their scores. One of the main problems that we’ve found in conducting this research is that while organizations believe security culture is important, they struggle to define it. This report can help organizations like yours get more clarity around security culture by helping to identify gaps and determine how to put your best foot forward.
You can download the 2020 “Security Culture Survey” by KnowBe4 Research to help better define and improve security culture within your organization. You should be on the lookout for more research from our new branch in the future.
