Talk With an Expert

The Good, The Bad, and The User

The Good, The Bad, and The User (PDF, 5.13MB)Last updated: 15 Aug, 2025
Presented by:
Alison Harrington
Alison Harrington

You’ve created in-depth trainings, flashy branding, catchy titles, and tailored your content to the right roles in the right locations. You’ve even gamified challenges and quizzes to build engagement and drive incentives with prizes. So, why is your cybersecurity program still hitting roadblocks?

It isn’t you; it’s your end users. To them, cybersecurity is a monolithic entity—everything from typical training and guidance to access recertifications to vulnerability triage to key management is “just cyber”. Poor user interface and experience across the range of cyber products in an organization contribute to end user roadblocks that affect adoption and effect cyber’s mission.

Turns out you CAN’T train away poor design. What can you do instead, and how can you do it?

Join this session to find out how HSBC’s Cybersecurity Education & Awareness team recognized the backlash of poor user experience and how we used digital accessibility as an inspiration to build a more inclusive program. Learn how we broke apart the problem, took time to research our user needs, worked with cyber technical SMEs, hired skilled experts (not generalists), and experimented with architecture standards and new product releases.

Building a better cybersecurity ecosystem for your end users will contribute to better adoption of training and awareness, ultimately making you more successful and making your organization more secure!

SANS Security Awareness Summit 2025