Case study: cooperation with De Volksbank
An interactive training course that really challenges the player
How do we make the customer resilient?
“We wanted people to be able to experience in a safe way what exactly these criminals do, what their actions are,” says Sanne van Denderen, manager of Secure Banking at Volksbank. You step into a movie, are addressed by a fraudster and determine the reactions of characters in various scenarios.”
- Volksbank proactively trains customers in security awareness and recognizing scams
- Together with Awareways, an application was developed specifically for consumers
- ‘Secure Banking’ is an interactive training with gamification and cause-and-effect dynamics
“It teaches you – at the moment – to recognize the five most common forms of digital scams and fraud and what you can do to avoid becoming a victim.”
Awareways cooperation
For security awareness training for staff, Volksbank has been working with Awareways for some time. “We are very satisfied with that and therefore wanted to also make our customers more resilient in a similar way”.
“We know our customer well and have the knowledge about fraud in the payment system. Awareways knows all about gamification and how to continuously improve our programs in terms of learning experience.”
“From this combination, we have created a realistic training course where customers can experience how criminals operate in a safe environment, and practice with ways in which you can then respond.”
Secure Banking
“We hope customers find the training as nifty as we do. We increase resilience and strengthen their role as a strong link in the fight against cybercrime.”
“At De Volksbank we also see that inverted view of the human factor in cybersecurity. The employee not as a weak link, as you so often see, but as the first line of defense, as a strong link in the chain.”
“From that approach we have achieved very good results in our internal training. Moreover, thanks to the interactive programs with gamification, the learning curve is a lot greater.”
Volksbank is the first bank to proactively train its customers
- The ‘Secure Banking’ consumer training course was developed in partnership with Awareways
- Thanks to gamification, the training feels realistic
“You are part of a real experience, instead of learning compulsory information in a school-like manner”
- In 20 minutes the customer tries to prevent a cyber criminal from taking money from people
- Customers receive immediate feedback on their actions and learn to recognize fraud and scams.
- The training is offered at SNS, ASN Bank and RegioBank and reaches millions of consumers.
Further development
“The next step is an effect measurement, but also a further development of content. The customer training has been deployed on five different characters, with five different modus operandi that we want to make our customers aware of. Our list of topics and strategies of fraudsters is longer than that, so we will definitely continue.”
“This allows us to provide customization in this area as well. For example, by responding to current events.”
“If a new way of approaching customers inevitably pops up again soon, how nice would it be to respond to it within a few weeks with a new story in the training?”
Societal role
“Cybercrime has really become a social problem,” says Van Denderen. “You can see that in all the figures, and these days you just stumble over fake text messages and fake emails. These are becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish from the real thing, because criminals play on very human heuristics to which we are sensitive. For example, by asking for help. But if you know what their tricks are, you can unmask scammers.”
“We would like to take our responsibility to help fight cybercrime. We do that with under-the-hood technical measures and active warnings. But, we wanted to do more to help our customers become resilient.”
Want to collaborate with Awareways as well?
Worried that cybercriminals have a high chance of success with your employees? Afraid that they will click on a wrong e-mail in good faith, or fail to expose a social engineer? Worried that the AVG is not always being complied with because of limited familiarity with privacy laws?
The Security Awareness Training of Awareways helps to make information security the new standard.
We can also develop a consumer training program for your organization!
