A Review of Methods for Evaluating Security Awareness Initiatives

The ‘human factor’ is commonly considered to be the weakest link in an organization’s security chain, and a significant percentage of companies have implemented security awareness (SA) programs to address this vulnerability. However, an element whose usefulness is still underestimated is the importance to perform measurements of the different SA programs’ effectiveness in order to assess their adequateness for achieving the intended goals. This gap has serious consequences as most of the security awareness campaigns have resulted to be largely unsuccessful. Awareness measurement tools might be determinant in providing feedback on the outcome of a program as well as in helping with the strategic planning for endorsing security. This article will introduce and critically compare a set of measurement methods. It will then discuss their attributes and suggested applications.