Human-Centered Security

Gabriel Friedlander, founder of security awareness training company, Wizer, talks about how “security awareness should be a basic life skill,” building empathy with end users, the power of storytelling in getting people to pay attention and take action, and the role an organization’s culture plays in security.

Show Notes

Gabriel has been studying human behavior for a long time. His first company, ObserveIT, an insider threat management platform recently acquired by Proofpoint, dealt with monitoring and reporting on out-of-policy employee behavior. Today, as the founder of Wizer, a security awareness training platform, Gabriel is focused on ensuring, as he put it, “security awareness is a basic human skill.” In fact, not only is Wizer’s training user-friendly and in digestible chunks, most of it is free.

In this episode, we talk about:
  • Cybersecurity awareness training should start with stories, to connect with people and encourage them to take action.
  • Cybersecurity awareness training should then focus on developing the skills that can be applied to a variety of scenarios (as Gabriel says, "we can't teach everything.").
  • Make security easy--but roadblocks may necessary to get users to slow down and think.

What is Human-Centered Security?

Cybersecurity is complex. Its user experience doesn’t have to be. Heidi Trost interviews information security experts about how we can make it easier for people—and their organizations—to stay secure.