S&P Global, MediaPro Win 2 Gold Omni Awards for Joint Security and Privacy Awareness Program
Bothell, WA (PRWEB) July 26, 2016 -- MediaPro, an internationally recognized leader in security and privacy awareness programs, announced today that security and privacy awareness programs it developed with and for S&P Global have won two gold Omni Awards.
The Omni Awards recognize outstanding media productions that engage, empower, and enlighten. The awards committee uses a panel of three peer professionals who independently judge entries.
S&P Global, a leading provider of transparent and independent ratings, benchmarks, analytics, and data to the capital and commodity markets worldwide, is committed to protecting data and privacy. Together with MediaPro, S&P Global created an awareness program dedicated to training its employees on cybersecurity and privacy protection best practices.
S&P Global’s program—spearheaded by Michael Chung, Director of Corporate Information Risk Management; joined by Rachel Steuermann, Corporate Communications; Leah Perry, Head of Global Privacy; and with executive support from Dennis Brixius, retiring Vice President and CSO, and Laura Deaner, current S&P Global CSO—used “conventional” web-based training to deliver its core messages in a measurable and trackable way. But the awareness initiative did not stop there.
More than Training
The team expanded the program with bi-yearly knowledge assessments, regular simulated phishing exercises to allow employees to practice identifying phishing threats, and monthly security and privacy videos that highlighted some of the key risks and behaviors needed to avoid those risks.
“The animated videos we deployed were especially effective in engaging our employees,” Mr. Chung said. “Leveraging amusing and informational videos in our office lobbies and outside our elevators got employees to notice our message. This generated compliments on our program and created a lot of feedback on our Intranet—a level of engagement I’d just not seen in the past.”
Collaborative Effort
The awards were given in two distinct categories: Educational and Corporate Communication, an achievement that MediaPro Chief Strategist Tom Pendergast, PhD, attributes to the innovative nature of S&P Global’s approach to cybersecurity education.
“S&P Global integrated privacy, security, and communications professionals into a working team, a rare collaborative mix,” Dr. Pendergast said. S&P Global also committed themselves to a regular, consistent pattern of training and reinforcement. “Lots of people pay lip service to the idea that you have to continually reinforce messages about avoiding risk if you hope to change behavior, but few live up to it,” Dr. Pendergast said. “S&P Global definitely walked the talk.”
Today, Cybersecurity is a huge risk area for all companies. But industry analysts agree: companies like S&P Global that commit to continuous improvement and ongoing education stand the best chance of creating the kind of risk-aware culture that is needed to combat cybersecurity risks. In fact, a report from PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that 76% less is spent on security events when employees are trained.
The Omni Awards have received entries from all 50 U.S. states and more than 47 countries.
About MediaPro
MediaPro, headquartered in Bothell, Washington, works with Fortune 500 CISOs, CIOs, and boards to diminish the human-based security threat through adaptive 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 http://www.mediapro.com, or follow MediaPro on Twitter @MediaProInc.
About S&P Global
S&P Global is a leading provider of transparent and independent ratings, benchmarks, analytics, and data to the capital and commodity markets worldwide. The Company's divisions include S&P Global Ratings, S&P Global Market Intelligence, S&P Dow Jones Indices and S&P Global Platts. S&P Global has approximately 20,000 employees in 31 countries. For more information, visit http://www.spglobal.com.
Kevin Eike, RH Strategic, http://www.mediapro.com, +1 (202) 585-0210, [email protected]
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