MediaPro Announces Winners of the 2017 Awareness Program Excellence Awards

BOTHELL, Wash., Nov. 1, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Leading employee awareness vendor MediaPro today announced the winners of its first-ever Awareness Program Excellence Awards, acknowledging five companies for their work producing security and privacy awareness programs worthy of recognition.

The winners and honorable mentions for 2017 are:

• Vakrangee Limited, Winner in the category of Small Organizations (1-1,500 employees)
• Encore Capital Group (ECG), Winner in the category of Mid-Sized Organizations (1,500-10,000 employees)
• Philips, Winner in the category of Enterprise (more than 10,000 employees)
• Oregon Health Authority and Department of Human Services (OHA|DHS), Winner in the category of Nonprofit or Government (any number of employees)
• Hyundai Capital, Honorable Mention

"By recognizing these organizations' creativity, initiative and dedication to high-quality employee awareness programs, we aim to encourage a broader effort to develop and maintain year-round, comprehensive awareness programs that ultimately foster broader risk-aware cultures," said Steve Conrad, MediaPro's Founder and Managing Director. "We commend these five organizations for their devotion to maintaining excellent security and privacy awareness programs."

Security and privacy professionals have realized that simply delivering annual training is not enough to mitigate risks. To change employees' behavior, companies must implement an ongoing comprehensive awareness program to communicate security and/or privacy best practices.

"Our security-aware employees will always be the best defense we could have in the ever-expansive threat landscape challenging today's companies," said Carl Eberling, ECG's Chief Information Officer and Senior Vice President for IT. 

ECG's awareness program involved a variety of engaging training content types with key training concepts reinforced throughout the year.

"[Information technology program manager] Elaine Ediin's focus, tireless effort and continued drive to educate and keep our employees aware of their role in our security posture undoubtedly helps our organization and enables our employees to protect their 'cyber self' outside the office," Eberling said.

Winner in the Nonprofit or Government category, the awareness efforts of OHA|DHS lead the way in the government sector with a focus on multi-topic training content updated regularly to address emerging threats.

"The Information Security and Privacy Office's (ISPO) vision is to foster a culture of risk-based security and privacy awareness," said Ronald Buchanan, OHA and DHS Chief Information Security Officer. "As Awareness and Education Coordinator, Jake Wilson is leading the charge for the 12,000 staff and partners of OHA and DHS, enhancing the quality and variety of online training while reducing the amount of time to develop and deploy it. Jake embodies ISPO's vision, and OHA is more secure thanks to his innovation and commitment."

Philips' awareness program recruited staff from multiple departments to create high-quality, interactive content, plus sending simulated phishing emails to employees.

"Knowing that an information security awareness program perceived as a helping force has a greater chance of success, we designed our program to relate cybersecurity awareness to personal life, family, and home," said Renee Forseth and Steef Geurden of Philips' IT Visibility & Engagement Office. "We've seen great engagement across a number channels we're using for our cybersecurity awareness and technical training."

Vakrangee's awareness program took an "all-hands-on-deck" approach-, showing an impressive degree of executive involvement with a heavy emphasis on results tracking.

"We try to make information security fun and memorable for employees, using an 'ABCDE' approach," said Ritu Thakkar, IT Process Head and Information Security Manager, Vakrangee Limited. "This clues our employees to remember to update their Antivirus, review Backups, follow our Code of Ethics, frequently change their Default Password and practice good data Encryption."

Hyundai Capital's awareness program used multiple training touches via a variety of methods to educate employees. 

"The team at Hyundai Capital certainly deserves an honorable mention," said Tom Pendergast, Ph.D., MediaPro's Chief Strategist for Security, Privacy and Compliance. "In a field that didn't include the brilliance of the Philips program—which is truly a standout—they would have been the winner."

A panel of judges from MediaPro assessed each submission to select leaders in awareness programs using a systematic approach based on the company's collective awareness program expertise. General criteria for judging were centered around industry needs and standards, future risk mitigation, adaptiveness and responsiveness of the program, reinforcement of training principles, and overall program effectiveness.

About MediaPro
MediaPro, headquartered in Bothell, Washington, works with many Fortune 500 companies and mid-sized businesses to diminish the human-based security threat through adaptive awareness training and reinforcement programs. Over the past two decades, MediaPro has won hundreds of industry awards and is recognized by Gartner as a leader in the Magic Quadrant for Security Awareness Training Vendors. For more information, please visit www.mediapro.com, or follow MediaPro on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter.

SOURCE MediaPro

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