Security awareness, by its very nature, relies on communication. And that communication, in turn, relies on clarity so that it can be fully understood and applied by the learner. To be effective, your security awareness communications must get the following three components right:
- Accurate, timely, and relevant security-related information
- A wide variety of content to meet organizational, cultural, and learner needs and nuance
- And the content must be presented in the learner’s native language and dialect
If you’re familiar with KnowBe4, you already know that we have the most up-to-date training library available. And you also likely know that we have the widest variety of content of any security awareness vendor. But did you know that we also lead the market when it comes to the breadth of our language support?
While some vendors may claim that they support dozens of languages, it’s important to keep things in perspective. On paper the language support offered by some vendors may look compelling and may even seem to be comparable to the depth of support offered by KnowBe4. In those cases, you should investigate their claims more fully. As you do so, consider the following:
- Are the languages that the vendor supports relevant to your audience? Even if a vendor has loads of languages, those translations are only useful to you if they represent the specific languages relevant to your organization. In other words, the number of translations isn’t the true metric to focus on. Rather, you need to see if the specific translations that the vendor has are the languages that you need. That leads us to question number two.
- Is the specific content that you are interested in available in the languages you need? Many vendors tend to claim expansive language support; but, upon investigation, you’ll find that those translations have only been done for a very small subset of content. Or, if the vendor claims that all their content is translated into several languages, it may be that the vendor’s content library is extremely small and limiting, thereby not truly meeting your needs. A culturally aware program requires that you find the intersection of relevant, quality content that is also available in the language(s) of your target users. If not, your default choice will be to deploy potentially mediocre or irrelevant content simply because it is offered in a necessary language. Or you may deploy good content but risk alienating certain groups of users because the content isn’t available in their language.
- Are the translations localized and of good quality? Unfortunately, we’ve seen several vendors try to up their translation count by using budget translation services or low-quality tools like Google Translate. Don’t get duped. Deploying content with subpar translations will have the effect of alienating your employees. Often, the security awareness training program is IT's face to the employees, and your users like to be communicated with in ways that show proper respect for their intelligence and culture. Accidently deploying subpar translations will make your program come across as sloppy and insensitive.
- Is the content text-only translations or is there a variety? Research has shown that learners gain the most value from a rich, multimedia experience. Are the translations available in audio and video materials or just text? Is there enough variety to engage your learners in different ways over the length of your contract?
The KnowBe4 Difference
At KnowBe4, we know that employees often tend to equate the relevance of security awareness to the quality of the training. Your awareness efforts suffer when your users feel disconnected with training because of translation or cultural issues.
Because of that, we create more translated content than any other vendor, and we are dedicated to creating/producing content across multiple regions of the globe by acquiring and partnering with best-in-class regionally-focused content providers (examples include exploqii in Germany, El Pescador in Brazil, Popcorn Training in South Africa, and Twist & Shout in the UK, among others).
Here are just a few interesting statistics that demonstrate KnowBe4’s unsurpassed global scale and excellence:
- The KnowBe4 2019 training modules are rolled out in 33 languages that are fully localized with audio, video, local examples/URLs. Each quarter more and more come available to align with annual and quarterly training programs.
- Posters and supporting materials (such as security documents) also available in 33 languages.
- There are also 9 training modules available in over 21 languages
At the Diamond level, we have even more content:
- The exploqii team recently fully translated 48 video modules in to 26 languages
- Twist & Shout having subtitles for 35 languages in Season 1 of Restricted intelligence
- SAC also has their popular Security Awareness Fundamentals course in 17 languages currently as well as 4 other modules in 11+ languages
- Popcorn is currently working on translating the popular game Spot the Phish in 33 languages
- El Pescador will be adding their entire library, which has content in up to 9 languages.
Find Out for Yourself
But why take our word for it? Seeing is believing. If you’ve had a vendor attempt to wow you with translation numbers, then we encourage you to put them to the test. Take the KnowBe4 translation challenge by directly evaluating the other vendors platform and seeing if what they have is of the breadth, depth, and quality that they represented to you; and then compare it to KnowBe4. An eyes-open, hands-on evaluation is the best way to know for yourself, you can see all of them in the KnowBe4 ModStore.
If you have recommendations for additional modules and/or languages to cover, let us know because we are making a major investment in this area and need your feedback. Work with your sales team or CSM to complete a request and you will likely see it in an upcoming release.
Preview the World's Largest Security Awareness Training Library
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