Foundations of Security Awareness Programs

This unit introduces the core rationale, structure, and practical planning elements for an organizational security awareness program. Students will learn to align awareness topics to business drivers and culture, plan logistics and budgets, and prepare stakeholder engagement and communications that move efforts beyond mere compliance.

Learning Objectives

• Analyze an organization’s culture, business drivers, and subcultures to prioritize security awareness topics and identify populations needing tailored approaches
• Apply program-planning methods to define components, roles (including ambassadors and champions), budgetary needs, and logistics required to launch a security awareness program
• Demonstrate the design of basic engagement tactics—such as phishing simulations, gamification, and two-tier communications tools—and justify their use beyond compliance
• Evaluate stakeholder responsibilities by developing targeted question sets for executive leadership, CISO-level staff, HR, Legal, Communications, and Physical Security to support program adoption and measurement