Knock your Cyber Training out of the Park

With Irene Coyle, OSP Cyber Academy

Cyber News Global had the pleasure of catching up with Irene Coyle, Chief Operating Officer OSP Cyber Academy who shared her thoughts on Immersive Training and the OSP Cyber Academy Cyber Escape Rooms.

Knock your Cyber Training out of the PARK.

I believe that to have an effective cyber training programme and not a one-off event), there are a number of things you should be considering when building your programme…

Typically, information security training happens when an employee joins and they are overloaded with information, and they are only really concerned with where the coffee machine is.

  • Frequency and recency of signals passing from one neuron to the next increase memory – Tell people what you want them to know often! (don’t worry I am not getting too scientific here). Shift the focus from an annual task to an ongoing program, comprising e-learning, team meetings, face to face training and newsletters. The more you provide information, the more chance you will have that the message will land.
  • Emotions strengthen Memory – When we have fun, our brains release dopamine. According to neuroscientist Dr Martha Burns, dopamine has a direct impact on our ability to remember. The more interested we are in an activity; the more dopamine is released and the better we remember it. She calls dopamine the “Save” button.
  • Memories are stored in multiple parts of the brain – Research suggests that memories are stored in many different parts of the brain. Different ways of learning trigger different reactions and different connections between synapses. If we engage all the senses while learning it will create memories in many parts of the brain and will reinforce your learning.

In addition, our brains are programmed to focus on new and unusual ways of learning.  Learning that taps into the brain’s natural curiosity will be more successful. 

OSP Cyber academy your staff to be engaged and motivated and feel minimal stress, Learning comes not from quiet classrooms and directed lectures, but from classrooms with an atmosphere of exuberant discovery” – that’s what we have introduced in our Immersive Training – a pop up escape room style exercise.

Our immersive training is a mental and physical adventure-based game in which players solve a series of puzzles and riddles using clues, hints, and strategy to complete an objective.

During our training, users will have fun, cover important topics, and have time to reflect on that learning.   The originality of the immersive approach will also support remembering key lessons. 

“We come to your office and just need the space of a desk, we set up the exercise all from one suitcase, so you are in a police officers desk area with items on the desk to explore” Solve clues, crack lock codes, decipher information in emails.  You need to act as a team to complete the exercise.

We all know from training some people will just sit back and hide and let others do the guesswork – we have designed our training so that everyone has a part to play. The message should be for your organisation to build cyber resilience – everyone has a part to play not just your IT team. The training should form part of an overall information security awareness training, comprising different types of learning including e-learning and regular newsletters. 

If you want to bring Cyber Security alive for your staff who are not involved in information security, then our pop-up “escape room” style training is an engaging and interactive experience. 

Studies show that people will retain up to 60% more information when they are having fun and this training is designed to be fun for the learners involved which means it is more effective in increasing cyber security awareness with your staff.

 You will also be providing a great team building experience as well as valuable skills that will help to keep company data and personal data safe. 

Get in touch with me and we can demo the immersive training over a 10-minute teams call – the advantages of technology.