Accountancy Priore keeps security top-of-mind with Guardey

Priore is a customer-centric accountancy and tax advisory firm in The Netherlands, with two office locations and 30 employees. We spoke to Geertjan van der Meer, assistant accountant and responsible for IT, about how they use Guardey to replace a yearly security awareness course and comply with the requirements of their cyber insurance. 

Challenge: find an ongoing security awareness training program

Accountants have access to a lot of personal data and Priore cares deeply about keeping that data safe. “We have access to a lot of personal data; social security numbers, bank account details, bank statements, and so on. We are also a reliable partner to our clients, who give us their data in confidence to keep it as safe as possible. So our employees need the right knowledge to prevent any data breaches,” says Geertjan.

Before they started using Guardey, the Priore team did a yearly course that took about 1.5 hours each time. “After a few months, people would forget most of the information they had learned during that course and it simply stopped being top-of-mind and up to date” says Geertjan. “I knew we needed to switch to an ongoing training program.” 

Solution: a weekly training program and friendly competition

Priore’s cyber insurance company AIG requires them to engage in regular security awareness training. “We can do this with a yearly course that they approve of, but we asked them if it’s OK to use Guardey. And it turns out that they really liked Guardey because you train every week and you learn about a wide range of different cyber security topics,” says Geertjan. 

To prove to the cyber insurance company that Priore employees regularly train security awareness, Geertjan uses Guardey’s insights overview. Here, he can track the teams participation and how they are performing per topic. 

Guardey has a company-wide leaderboard that shows users how they are performing compared to their colleagues. “This competitive element often creates discussion after challenges, which is exactly what we were looking for”, says Geertjan. “We also appreciate the little amount of time Guardey costs our employees every week. It only takes a few minutes each week, but it keeps security top-of-mind effectively.” 

Results: high training participation without any incentives

“Guardey is easy to implement”, says Geertjan. “We first tested Guardey with a small group of five colleagues. Everybody quickly agreed that it was the right fit for us and after three weeks, in the middle of February, we rolled it out within the organization. For organizations like ours, this is often a very busy period.” 

Still, the participation was high from the beginning. Geertjan: “80% of the organization immediately started actively engaging after the first introductory email. After a month or two, everybody apart from 1 or 2 people was using Guardey every week. This was all due to intrinsic motivation and understanding the importance of security awareness. There are no incentives like a monthly prize or anything, so we can still try that if participation happens to slow down.” 

Some employees were skeptic before first using Guardey. The most-asked question: ‘is it really necessary to train every week and do we need it in the form of a game?’ “It turns out that it only takes them a few minutes every week, which everybody can spare, and the competition is also an addition to the process of keeping up with the ever changing world of cyber risks.” says Geertjan. “A few fanatics wait for the new Guardey challenge to go live every Tuesday. They can’t wait to get started. Those are also the users who tend to be high on the leaderboard.” 

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