Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

Measuring Your Success: Baseline and Continual Measurement

Here you are. You’ve done your cultural assessment, you were able to identify the holes in the organizations security awareness efforts, you modified training and created a 12 month content plan to fix this. It’s time to sit back, and see some real user behavior change right?

Quick question: How do you know that your plan worked? Are users reporting more issues to the help desk? Are people more able to identify phishing emails? Are users retaining the information from annual training through the year? Basically, if your boss walked in and asked for proof that the budget was put to good use will you have anything to provide besides ‘trust me?’

Probably not and because of that you need to measure the behavior within your organization. Without measuring user behavior you have no way of knowing how successful, or unsuccessful, your security awareness architecture is. You are also left in the situation of ‘fire fighter’ in that you only know that a hole (fire) is present when that hole creates a big problem (i.e., a password attack causing a major data breech).

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The Value of Baseline Measurements

There are two types of measurement that are going to be pivotal in showing you significant changes in behavior: baseline and continual. Baseline measurement shows you how users were performing before any changes were made thereby providing you with a point of comparison. Lets say that you started your intervention in June and you measured user behavior through September (see ‘No Baseline graph’). Did your intervention work? To be perfectly honest, this graph shows nothing impressive at all. As a matter of fact, it looks like nothing has happened. Money well spent for sure.

Now lets add a baseline measurement and see how that looks.

Much better! Now you can clearly see that (1) help desk calls have significantly increased, and (2) the number of successful phishing attacks have significantly decreased!

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Furthermore, your new training/content plan seems to be producing long term behavior change over the following months. Great job.

This example really outlines the value of baseline measurement. Without it you really have no way of knowing if you made it better, worse, or broke even.

The Value of Continual Measurement

Once you have shown the effectiveness of your security awareness efforts, is their value in consistent measurement after? Of course. Constant measurement of user behavior allows you to see behavior trends and address issues before they become a problem. Lets go back to the help desk and phishing attack example. You continued to measure user behavior for several more months and suddenly you saw this.

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What happened? Not only are your users not calling the help desk but they are also falling prey to more phishing attacks. They are performing similar to before your new training and content plan was implemented. Upon further investigation you find out that a new phishing method was just released and your users are having a hard time identifying it. This also leads to less calls to the help desk.

While initially this may seem like a giant leap in the wrong direction, it is exactly what behavior measurement is for. Security threats evolve and your security awareness architecture has to evolve with it. By measuring user behavior consistently you are able to see when patterns like this occur and develop an intervention (e.g., a news letter, quick email) that addresses this before it creates a big problem for your users and you.

Being Happy at Work – It Might Not be Who You Think!

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Time, Business and  Money  commented on recent research regarding happiness and performance in the workplace.  Who is the happiest at work?  It might not be who you thought.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a professor at Harvard business school and the author of Evolve! Succeeding in the Digital Culture of Tomorrow, says that the happiest people tend to be those facing the toughest, but most worthwhile, challenges.

In her research concerning what motivates people at highly innovative companies, Kanter found, “Money acted as a scorecard, but it did not get people up-and-at ‘em for the daily work, nor did it help people go home every day with a feeling of fulfillment.”

When people feel like their work can make a difference, they tend to be happier work such as teaching kids in inner city schools, working for solutions to homelessness, or improving health in developing countries.

However, a study by Leadership IQ found that in 42% of companies the lowest performing employees were more engaged and motivated in their work than their high performing colleagues.   Many high performing employees are stressed out – they have to make up for the low performers and tend to feel undervalued often because they are.

To read more about which workers perform best read the entire article.

How to Stop Slacking Off for Good

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Maybe you’re one of those people who dutifully acknowledges deadlines – who works at a slow and steady pace that ensures that everything is completed ahead of schedule, with a minimum amount of rushing and panic.

If you’re one of those people, you can stop reading now – this article isn’t for you!

Instead, this post is for the procrastinators, the slackers and for everybody else who sees deadlines rushing towards them and still feels powerless to act.  If you have the sneaking suspicion that you could be doing better at managing your responsibilities, you need to take the following three steps:

Step #1 – Assess your priorities

One thing to keep in mind when it comes to killing procrastination is that it’s not always an indication that you’re lazy.  In plenty of cases, the fact that you can’t get focused is your mind trying to tell you that you aren’t working on the right things.

Can’t seem to get motivated to get to the gym on a regular basis?  Maybe the problem isn’t you – it’s the type of workout you’ve chosen to commit to.  Struggling to do the work necessary to be considered for a big promotion?  It could be your brain’s subconscious way of telling you that you’re pursuing the wrong job or field.

So whenever you find yourself slacking off, dig deeper to uncover the reasons for your lack of motivation.  While you might not be able to change your situation to eliminate slacking off entirely, you may find certain instances in which you can circumvent procrastination by changing your priorities.

Step #2 – Set strict deadlines

Once you’ve weeded out any unnecessary procrastination triggers, it’s up to you to set strict deadlines for yourself.

According to Parkinson’s Law, a task expands to fill the amount of time allotted to it.  If you have two hours to put together a 10-page report, you’ll find a way to get it done.  But if you’re given two days to complete the same task, it won’t take the same two hours to complete.  Instead, you’ll find that the project expands to fill the entire two days – leaving you slacking off until the last possible minute and feeling the stress of this work hanging over your head.

Fortunately, you can use this rule to your advantage.  To avoid slacking off, break each of your projects – whether personal or professional – into smaller chunks.  Then, assign a deadline to every chunk that you create.  Make your deadlines as small as possible.  Even if you know that you have more time that could be allotted to each chunk, creating a little bit of pressure by setting tight deadlines will give you the motivation needed to get things done.

If you find yourself disregarding your own deadlines, enlist the support of others.  At work, promise your superiors that you’ll have certain milestones completed at set times in order to give yourself extra incentive to avoid slacking off.  If your goals are related to personal activities, share them with a friend, a family member or a public blog to give yourself the impression that you’ll be letting others down if you fail to stick to your deadlines.

And if you really need some extra motivation, look into using a service like StickK, which will allow you to bet a certain amount of money on yourself for completing certain tasks.  If you fail to meet the goals you set for yourself on the website, your money could wind up going to a charity you hate – creating the extra incentive needed to prevent procrastination.

Step #3 – Optimize your environment

After you’ve created deadlines that will prevent you from slacking off and enlisted the support of an accountability buddy, the last thing you’ll want to do is to dissect your environment for any triggers that could be preventing you from getting things done.

As an example, if you always struggle to make it to the gym because your workout clothes are upstairs and you always wind up parked on the couch before you can change, find a way to store your attire closer to the door.

If you consistently procrastinate on a reporting task at work because it takes too long to gather all the data you need, develop a new system that involves collecting information on the day before you need to create your reports.

Pay attention to your own unique rhythms as well.  If you’re full of energy in the morning, but tend to need a nap by mid-afternoon, schedule your deadlines to coincide with your most focused periods.  There’s no reason to fight against yourself when it comes to getting things done!

Really, there are always going to be ways to slack off and procrastination triggers that discourage you from living up to your full potential.  While implementing these steps will go a long way towards preventing you from slacking off, only you can take responsibility for eliminating the excuses and bullshit that lead to devastating procrastination.