Finally. Watchable Security Video Based Training

You can have a great message and great intentions...great teachers and important content but if it isn't received and consumed then the effort is wasted. To make a message stick, it's got to be relevant, entertaining, memorable and a bit fun. Curricula (www.getcurricula.com) specializes in video based security training that's customizable and watchable. Join CEO & Founder Nick Santora as we learn about the magical intersection of information and entertainment.

 

Transcript:

 

David Littman:                    Hey, Dave Littman, Truth in IT. Today I am happy to be joined by Nick Santora. Nick, welcome.

Nick Santora:                       Hi, David. Thanks for having me.

David Littman:                    All right. So Nick is Founder and CEO of Curricula. These guys are bringing information about security awareness training in a whole new way. So a little Netflix in one respect, Ken Burns in another respect. So tell us a little bit, Nick, about what you guys are doing in Curricula.

Nick Santora:                       Yeah, so what we do is we teach organizations and their employees how to not get hacked. With all the great appliances and hardware and everything else that's out there, the employee is one of the most susceptible parts of the organization and one of the biggest risks. So what we do is we have software that delivers out short little animated episodes about visualizing a cyber security breach. Employees watch those episodes and get trained on some of those cyber security risks and how they apply it to themselves and then at the end of those, they are building kind of this culture of security around some of those content and characters.

David Littman:                    So yeah, I mean, obviously the human is many times the weakest link in the whole cyber security chain and training them effectively is critical. So getting them to consume the information and the content about how to be prepared is it's a challenge. We don't want training to be boring so how do you guys make it so that it is interesting and engaging for them?

Nick Santora:                       Well, one of the things, half of our team is actually from the design field so they used to work in New York doing big brand awareness campaigns. So we brought their expertise to kind of help visualize and bring the stuff to life, almost candy coat the subject of cyber security into something that's easy to consume for a everyday employee that's not a security expert. Then part of what we do in that content is like I said, teaching in these stories. So we kind of talk and discuss about stories everyday of our lives. At the end of the day, you talk about what happened throughout your day in this kind of story narrative. We do the same thing except for we create the stories ourselves and they involve cyber security breaches.

                                                      So you start to relate with not only the story itself but the characters that are inside of that story and your employees can kind of resonate with some of that information and apply it both in their personal lives but also at work.

David Littman:                    Okay. So simple model, you guys are offering video content as a way to educate people about cyber security hatches, so hacks, so that they are more prepared in case they are faced for example with a phishing attack. But in terms of like what businesses buy from you guys? Are they buying a whole package of different videos or are they selecting individual topics? Help us understand a little bit about that.

Nick Santora:                       Sure. So every business is different and they treat information security and cyber security differently. We have customers all the way down to the 10 employee range all the way up into the 30,000 employee range. So pretty vast, diverse group. All the way from utility industry, to retail to healthcare. Then inside of each one of those episodes, you can actually customize some of the content to relate specific to your organization. Perfect example of that is our physical security episode. So how do you keep secure areas secure? Do you have badge scanning? Do you have fingerprints? Do you have any types of policies for visitors in place?

                                                      Inside of those episodes, you can actually apply them specifically to your organization and say, "Well, if you don't see someone walking around with one of these lanyards of this specific color, here's our policy that discusses that." So companies can kind of customize and tailor them to themselves while being able to maintain the static content or the stock content that is out of the box to help make it more relatable to the employees.

David Littman:                    Okay, fabulous. So you guys are also found at getcurricula.com.

Nick Santora:                       Correct.

David Littman:                    You guys are also doing a lot for cyber security awareness month. Talk to us a little bit about that and we'll finish up there.

Nick Santora:                       Sure. So next month, the month of October is national cyber security awareness month. That was started in 2004 and it's a major initiative to promote cyber security across businesses, organizations and all the citizens throughout the United States. So one of the things that we're doing is not only speaking at different conferences about awareness, we also offer free episode on our website about Ransomware. So that applies very directly to small businesses especially because without having a large team of cyber experts, Ransomware can be very devastating. As you scale as larger the enterprise gets, those infections can be dramatic as far as reputation damage and downtime and cost and so on and so on.

                                                      So on our site, you can not only watch that episode but we're going to be promoting several pieces of content throughout the month. So you can follow us at getcurricula.com or on our Twitter and LinkedIn which is just @curricula is our usernames on there.

David Littman:                    Okay, great. All right. So Nick Santora with Curricula. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today. We urge our viewers to go and really consider whether or not your business population is educated about how to prevent from cyber security attacks and whether or not that information is getting through. You can reach out to Curricula and you can have them get training in a very painless way that everyone can enjoy and really consume. So Nick, thanks again for taking the time to meet with us today.

Nick Santora:                       Thanks, David. Appreciate it.

David Littman:                    Okay. Thanks for watching.