I manage a small Security team where I work. We have a very good security awareness training program we've built out over the years. I'm biased, of course. I he

I manage a small Security team where I work. We have a very good security awareness training program we've built out over the years. I'm biased, of course. I helped build it. We may never solve the human aspect of security entirely. However, we have one thing in particular that works well. The most effective part of our program is the internal phishing attempts. They aren't annually or quarterly but almost monthly and sometimes weekly. It works very, very well and keeps phishing at the top of everyone's mind. There is nothing quite like teaching someone how easy it is to be caught off guard by showing them how easily someone can be phished and how they took the bait. It disarms them and the ego part of the conversation. It makes it a psychologically safe element of the corporate culture. It changes the conversation from "You're a dummy <3 SecOps" to "It can happen to anybody. In fact it's happened to a number of important and very smart people here. Stop, Look and Think before you click or fill out that form or send that file/information." It's an interesting part of our security awareness program. In fact, we've built out a small application that sends the phishing email with a remote <img /> to track the email view(see the bait). We then track them hitting the link through a unique URL (taking the bait), and track the final push of a login button or web-form (swallowing the hook entirely.) It allows us to track how effective the campaign is and understand who may need some remedial training and of course how we can better improve the security awareness training because if a high percentage take the bait, the security awareness training wasn't effective. In fact, I sent this article around the office this afternoon and sometime mid-week, plan to send another phishing attempt to see if it helped. This strategy of course requires an organization to be fairly emotionally intelligent and have the right corporate culture. One of trust and transparency in a psychologically safe environment where people aren't mocked or made fun of but properly educated if they take the bait. I know that this kind of culture may not be the norm. NOTE: We don't have as much to secure as a SnapChat and we aren't a high profile target. We just figured these things were the bare-minimum things to do to protect our employees and our customers.