As a provider of core national infrastructure, Meridian has a duty to keep its information and systems safe from attack to prevent negative impacts on its customers, business operations, reputation, and finances.
Meridian has a strong focus on people and wellbeing. This culture lends itself to helping staff raise their awareness about cyber risks and the ways they need to keep information secure. This includes both at work, and at home. They not only need to do this for compliance reasons but they understand the importance of training and awareness as an integral component of their overall cyber risk mitigation strategy.
The challenge
The challenge for Meridian was to upskill its employees to identify and mitigate cybersecurity threats. This needed to be achieved in a cost-effective manner, without disrupting daily operations or requiring employees to attend training sessions at specific times. Additionally, the learning solution needed to be bespoke and tailored to the specific systems and processes used by Meridian, and presented in a format that was engaging and easy to understand.
The solution
To meet Meridian's requirements, Skillpod, in partnership with Mindshift, developed a bespoke cybersecurity module that covered the systems and processes used by Meridian. The module was delivered online, allowing employees to complete the training at their own pace from their work-issued device. The learning activities were designed to be self-directed and consistent with adult learning principles, encouraging learners to work at their own pace and use existing knowledge to build further understanding and awareness. Assessment was built into the learning design via a series of scenario-based formative assessments, providing instant feedback loops to support learning.
As part of their long-term, big picture cyber security strategy, this module was the first step in the development of an awareness programme to raise their security maturity levels in this domain and to reduce the chance of a cyber-attack, data breach, or accidental data loss across the organisation.
Results
By deploying the module through its own Learning Management System, Meridian was able to provide cost-effective cybersecurity training to its employees without disrupting daily operations. The module had a very high level of senior management support, with a strong endorsement for the learning and genuine support for not only risk management but also the opportunity to provide support to employees in their professional and personal life.