By Wayne McKinnon (613) 860-1384

1. Find out what interests your audience. Recognize that the reason awareness programs are required is that typically while the information you are providing is important, it falls beyond the interest level of the intended audience.

2. Make your material relevant. The people you do reach often are unable to immediately see how to apply it to their situation.

3. Use attention grabbing headlines and be brief. People have too much to do and ever shortening attention spans.

4. Use compelling content. Policy documents are not compelling.

5. Improve your measures of success. Reading an information item or attending a session on its own does not constitute a successful program.

6. Identify the steps to success. Getting people to read a well crafted invitation is just as much of a success towards a the overall  program as any other security awareness activity they might participate in.

7. Make awareness on-going. Maintaining employee awareness is like maintaining good health. One meal or one week at the gym does not make you healthy for very long. You need constant maintenance and so does your awareness program

8. Ensure that you have support from the top. Managers need to see the relevance themselves. If they don't "get it", they won't be supportive of your initiatives as evidenced by not allowing staff the time to participate, or not funding activities.

9. Keep an eye out for changes in the way things are done. Changes to business processes often represent an opportunity to insert awareness activities.

10. Keep up the momentum. Falling behind is a sure way to lose the interest of employees who begin to look forward to your offerings.