10 Ways To Measure IT Security Program Effectiveness

Just how effective is all of that "soft" spending on security awareness training? Steve Santorelli of Team Cymru says there are ways to track and measure that, primarily through phishing and social engineering stress testing, where you test you staff for phishing awareness and social engineering awareness.

Basically, you run a fake phishing campaign and make a few hoax calls," says Santorelli, director of analysis and outreach for the research firm. "Reward and publicize good results, help failures to learn from their errors, and you'll have folks actively watching out for these attacks--for a few weeks at least."