{"id":334,"date":"2025-12-04T21:19:18","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T21:19:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/audrijackson\/?p=334"},"modified":"2025-12-04T21:23:37","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T21:23:37","slug":"article-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/audrijackson\/2025\/12\/04\/article-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Developing Metrics to Assess the Effectiveness of Cybersecurity Awareness Program &#8211;\u00a0Article Review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>This article&nbsp;relates to the&nbsp;human-centered&nbsp;cyber security model&nbsp;because it evaluates the&nbsp;effectiveness&nbsp;of&nbsp;methods&nbsp;used to&nbsp;mitigate&nbsp;the human factor in cyber security awareness&nbsp;(CSA)&nbsp;programs.&nbsp;Measuring the&nbsp;results&nbsp;by reviewing surveys, trainings,&nbsp;and&nbsp;behaviors&nbsp;before and after the training.&nbsp;The paper acknowledges there&nbsp;isn\u2019t&nbsp;a single&nbsp;common understanding&nbsp;of what factors to measure or how to measure them during the evaluation of the cyber security awareness program. Without a standardized method of measuring the effectiveness of cybersecurity awareness programs, it makes it difficult to properly improve existing programs as we&nbsp;cannot&nbsp;accurately&nbsp;calculate areas where the program falls&nbsp;short.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This article&nbsp;bases its assessment on&nbsp;the European&nbsp;Literacy Policy Network&nbsp;(ELINET)&nbsp;four indicators&nbsp;for awareness evaluation; the&nbsp;indicators are impact, sustainability, accessibility, and monitoring. It is accepted that&nbsp;the four indicators are&nbsp;typically&nbsp;used&nbsp;outside of cybersecurity but were adjusted for cybersecurity awareness purposes.&nbsp;A systematic literature review&nbsp;of 32 papers&nbsp;was conducted&nbsp;to&nbsp;determine&nbsp;and analyze the \u201cfactors to be measured\u201d and their \u201cmeasuring methods\u201d&nbsp;frequently&nbsp;used to assess the performance of a cybersecurity awareness program.&nbsp;The data&nbsp;collected&nbsp;was based on 9 measured factors&nbsp;that included&nbsp;behavior, attitude, knowledge and&nbsp;competence,&nbsp;interest, reachability,&nbsp;touchability, value-added,&nbsp;usability,&nbsp;and overall feedback.&nbsp;These factors were then evaluated based on the measurement factors or how they are conducted by an organization. This article&nbsp;identified&nbsp;measurement factors&nbsp;such as&nbsp;the intrusive&nbsp;and&nbsp;non-intrusive method, interest by audience, interest by organizer, interest by management,&nbsp;accessibility of awareness materials, self-motivated actions, financial and non-financial benefits, feedback strategies, and relevant topics covered&nbsp;against a cybersecurity awareness program.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This&nbsp;article&nbsp;relates back to the human-centered cybersecurity model which places&nbsp;humans&nbsp;central to cybersecurity policies, procedures, and frameworks in place. This article aligns&nbsp;with that human-centered model&nbsp;because&nbsp;it focuses&nbsp;on&nbsp;how&nbsp;to measure&nbsp;the success of a&nbsp;cybersecurity&nbsp;awareness program&nbsp;and how to apply changes for&nbsp;improved outcomes&nbsp;and consistency. It&nbsp;discusses the concerns of how cybersecurity awareness programs are not&nbsp;currently&nbsp;diverse enough to work across an entire organization.&nbsp;It cannot be&nbsp;determined&nbsp;if the measured behavior is&nbsp;genuine&nbsp;based on learned knowledge&nbsp;provided by the CSA program&nbsp;or based on&nbsp;repeated actions and guesstimations.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This article&nbsp;acknowledges&nbsp;that individual&nbsp;interest&nbsp;from&nbsp;senior&nbsp;management, organization, or&nbsp;impacted&nbsp;audience will&nbsp;change&nbsp;how the&nbsp;success of a cybersecurity awareness program&nbsp;is measured.&nbsp;Focusing on&nbsp;financial&nbsp;interest and budgets&nbsp;or compliance standards&nbsp;while disregarding&nbsp;important factors&nbsp;that would lead to program improvements.&nbsp;This article highlighted the inconsistencies in measuring the success of&nbsp;cybersecurity&nbsp;awareness&nbsp;programs. Acknowledging common factors that are measured,&nbsp;how they are presented to&nbsp;an audience, and&nbsp;discovering&nbsp;gaps in measurements. Later, this article proposes&nbsp;standardized&nbsp;metrics&nbsp;for assessing a cybersecurity awareness program. These metrics&nbsp;modified&nbsp;the&nbsp;four ELINET&nbsp;indicators, impact, sustainability,&nbsp;accessibility,&nbsp;and&nbsp;monitoring&nbsp;to apply appropriately to cybersecurity.&nbsp;&nbsp;Aiming to provide a consistent measure of cybersecurity awareness program to allow for&nbsp;accurate&nbsp;and&nbsp;timely&nbsp;process improvement.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Chaudhary, S.,\u00a0Gkioulos, V., &amp; Katsikas, S. (2022, May 23).\u00a0<em>Developing metrics to assess the effectiveness of Cybersecurity Awareness Program | Journal of Cybersecurity | Oxford\u00a0academic<\/em>. Journalof\u00a0Cybersecurity.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/academic.oup.com\/cybersecurity\/article\/8\/1\/tyac006\/6590603\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https:\/\/academic.oup.com\/cybersecurity\/article\/8\/1\/tyac006\/6590603<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This article&nbsp;relates to the&nbsp;human-centered&nbsp;cyber security model&nbsp;because it evaluates the&nbsp;effectiveness&nbsp;of&nbsp;methods&nbsp;used to&nbsp;mitigate&nbsp;the human factor in cyber security awareness&nbsp;(CSA)&nbsp;programs.&nbsp;Measuring the&nbsp;results&nbsp;by reviewing surveys, trainings,&nbsp;and&nbsp;behaviors&nbsp;before and after the training.&nbsp;The paper acknowledges there&nbsp;isn\u2019t&nbsp;a single&nbsp;common understanding&nbsp;of what factors to measure or how to measure them during the evaluation of the cyber security awareness program. Without a standardized method of measuring the effectiveness&#8230; <\/p>\n<div class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/audrijackson\/2025\/12\/04\/article-review\/\">Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":29426,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wds_primary_category":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/audrijackson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/audrijackson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/audrijackson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/audrijackson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29426"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/audrijackson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=334"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/audrijackson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":341,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/audrijackson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334\/revisions\/341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/audrijackson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/audrijackson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/audrijackson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}