Isn’t This Supposed To Be Boring? My Experience With Living Security Training.

The man stares intently at the screen of his computer, the light casting an eerie glow on his face in the otherwise dark room. His fingers fly across the keyboard as he calls up one site after another, searching for answers. The man’s eyes cut to his watch—20 minutes and counting. Will he find what he needs in time? 

It’s my first week working with Living Security, and I’m in a room—a virtual one—with a handful of other new hires. Like all new team members, we’re participating in the company’s security awareness training so that we can get first-hand experience with the products we’re working to create and promote. Earlier in the week, we put our cybersecurity smarts to the test, successfully making our way out of Living Security’s CyberEscape Online team training experience by proving that we can think like a threat actor. As far as onboarding experiences go, it’s a fun one. 

In between sessions, we’ve been tasked with working our way through the bite-sized videos and puzzles in Living Security’s security awareness training platform, earning points for every module we complete and eagerly seeing how we stack up against our teammates in the company leaderboard. While I still have a ton of content to work through—Living Security has more than 100 modules, group training exercises, and series in its library, with new content released every quarter—my favorite modules so far have been from The Squad, which features genuine laugh-out-loud moments. See for yourself:

Today, we’re turning our attention to a new challenge, the Born Secure: Training Ground series. In it, we meet Jacob Webb, codenamed xGhost, the newest recruit for an elite group of super-hackers working for the government. The series of videos and challenges follow Jacob as he works his way through an increasingly complex series of training exercises, fighting to best his fellow recruits and win one of the coveted spots in the program. Here’s the trailer:

As the video fades to black, leaving us wondering whether Jacob will find the information he needs to make it to the next round of training, an exercise pops up on the screen. 

“Who wants to be the leader this time?” asks Angie, our facilitator.

“I will!” The yellow leader banner appears above Allie’s name as she takes control of the exercise. 

“Okay, we’re dealing with Business Email Compromise. How do we make this look believable?”

As Allie reads through the scenario, the rest of our cohort tabs over to the Resources section to search for clues. 

I unmute my mic. “Choose the second email address. It’s only one character off from the real one. The target might not notice the difference.”

Step by step, we work our way through the scenario, successfully convincing the CEO’s unsuspecting assistant to wire $10,000 to an unauthorized account.  

Here in the training, our fraudulent cash grab is just pretend. Out in the real world, Business Email Compromise is an all-too-real phenomenon. When the training is over, though, I don’t feel alarmed, I feel empowered.

That’s what’s so brilliant about Born Secure: Training Ground and Living Security’s other training series. Without lecturing, using scare tactics, or pointing fingers, Born Secure managed to get across an impressive amount of information in less than an hour. I’m more aware of different types of physical and digital security threats and how to avoid them. I can see how security is relevant to me and to my role in the company. Since the training was play-based and interactive, I’m way more likely to remember what I learned than if I’d spent an hour in a conference room listening to someone read slides about vishing and password stuffing.

My only complaint? I wish Born Secure were longer. The training ended on a cliffhanger and I’m dying to find out what happens next!

Living Security combines best-in-class, Hollywood-style content with winning behavioral science to bring you a customizable security awareness training program that solves your compliance requirements and helps turn human risk into human strength.

Want to experience the industry’s most advanced security awareness platform for yourself? Request a demo.