A Change Initiative: Coaching Plans for Implementing Cybersecurity Strategies

Is it easier to initiate a change or to sustain it? At Digital Attitude, we have little doubt: sustaining a change means nurturing, reinforcing, and integrating small habits that help us achieve a goal that is important to us. We are driven to change by the quiet energy of our needs and desires—the more we feel they are our own, the stronger they become.

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The Behavioral Design approach to a change project emphasizes these elements in developing a path for acquiring habits and skills. One of the most recent projects we’re working on is specifically aimed at guiding employees at a client company to improve their tools and approaches to cybersecurity, moving away from habits and processes that make certain activities less secure.

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Several teams wanted to adopt new cybersecurity protocols to improve operations related to daily tasks, internal communication, and the exchange of emails and documents. Fewer tools, streamlined processes, and shared best practices: this is the shift needed to do away with more confusing and less secure ways of working from a cybersecurity perspective.

Where did we start?

By listening to the client and understanding their needs. Hearing about each team’s activities and needs provided us with the essential guidelines for setting up the project.

Along with listening, a survey involving the client company’s various departments proved essential. This survey revealed the teams’ needs in the form of key data that helped us understand their habits, the areas requiring attention, and even the terminology to use when defining problems, tools, and solutions. By analyzing this report, we derived the behavioral insights upon which we built the change process.

The next step was co-design with the client, a crucial step in moving on to the actual structuring of the project. hi, DA’s digital coach, was the key solution: software designed to guide a person through the entire process of change.

The term “benefits” was a key word. We had already developed materials to support the adoption of effective cybersecurity strategies, but co-designing with the client gave us the opportunity to identify specific needs and create a set of customized content tailored to the target audience.

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What were the main needs that emerged from the co-design phase? Knowing how to handle phishing attempts—which often arrive via email—recognizing and identifying the main cyber threats and malware, sharing files securely across the entire company, and effectively fostering a genuine culture of security. These key points immediately became the steps of our Coaching Plan—that is, the adoption and change process guided by hi.

We have defined a step for each benefit, for example: introducing Hi, managing files securely; the main types of online malware and how to recognize them; good cybersecurity habits when performing tasks; and working together to foster a true “security mindset.”

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While the first step is exploratory, the others focus on a key benefit and, over the course of several days of interaction, provide the user with tips and information on how to achieve it by incorporating specific features into their daily tasks. Through small actions, it becomes easier to achieve the benefit of each step.

hi interacts with users on various levels. The most direct forms are Tips and Nudge, messages with different purposes and objectives:

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· The Tips help users understand where they are in the process, what they will do next, and what they can achieve. For example, a tip on the first day of the phishing module introduces users to the main topic and directs them to the first in-depth resource to help them begin using a new feature;

· Nudges, on the other hand, are contextual messages—that is, messages tied to a specific action: for example, if a user opens a private chat in Teams, a Nudge appears to remind them how to share a file while maintaining a certain level of security.

The Learning Materials are essential for each step, allowing users to explore various topics in depth. We’ve created several types, each with specific objectives. The OnePage guides are more theoretical in nature and describe information and tools in brief sections; the interactive materials allow users to learn about a new feature through a simulation of that feature—for example, the various ways to share a file. The scrollytelling format explores topics through a vertical narrative that gradually delves deeper, while the videos highlight the latest features and benefits of specific tools in just a few seconds.

All of these materials are always available on the hi dashboard.

The importance of this variety of materials and interactions lies in their synergy: to help people bring about real change, the Tips help them recognize the milestones along the way; the Learning Materials provide the information needed to understand which technologies to use and how; and the Nudges come into play at the exact moment a feature becomes available, prompting the user to apply it in a simple and direct way.

We’re not interested in telling users what to do, but rather in highlighting the benefits they gain by performing a specific action. Taken together, these actions allow users, step by step, to recognize new tools and habits as an integral part of their workday.

We certainly can't forget about the data: the team of data analysts collects and analyzes it, providing us with important feedback and insights on how the process is going and how we can improve it.

Because creating user-centered experiences means, first and foremost, working in a data-driven way. We strive to do this every day—after all, we have our own good habits, too!

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