KB4-Con 2023: Security Culture Critical to Fight Against Phishing

Prior to KB4-Con, KnowBe4 launched its 2023 Security Culture How-To Guide. It details the fundamentals of what security culture is and the steps an organization can take to understand, build and maintain a strong culture within their workplace.

KnowBe4 defines security culture as the ideas, customs and social behaviors of a group that influence its security. Additionally, security culture can be broken down into seven different dimensions as described in KnowBe4’s 2022 Security Culture Report. These dimensions include the attitudes, behaviors, cognition, communication, compliance, norms and responsibilities of employees and organizations that can be used to measure security culture.

This guide provides seven basic, yet detailed steps for organizations to use to begin their journey toward building and strengthening their security culture. The guide also provides examples along with a checklist for an easy way to measure and track improvement.

“Security culture is a critical, contributing factor in reducing risks and improving overall security within organizations,” said Stu Sjouwerman (pictured above), KnowBe4’s CEO. “At KnowBe4, we recognize security culture as a vital backbone for a strong workforce that is educated and prepared to defend against bad actors who utilize social engineering and other malicious types of attacks. We created this how-to guide to inspire and support organizations around the world as they work to build human firewalls and fortify their security culture.”

Photo courtesy KnowBe4

During KB4-Con, KnowBe4 will provide a sneak peek of its latest product aimed at defending against social engineering attacks. Rollout is expected during the third quarter.

Meredith Cook, KnowBe4’s channel marketing director, said KB4-Con gives partners a unique opportunity to hear KnowBe4’s road map in a way that nobody else does, and interact with those who own designing the products.

“It’s by far the top takeaway that we hear about, being able to talk to our chief product officer, Michael himself, all within … the channel framing, because it’s not about giving partners their own specific messages,” she said. “But we found a way to … wrap around sessions on everything else that they’re hearing about security culture, the products, and just make it easier to digest, position and sell.”

Partners have been critical to KnowBe4‘s growth strategy over the past year, not just in North America, but around the world, said KnowBe4’s Michael Williams.

“We have seen strong growth over the last year both domestically and internationally, and that is 100% thanks to our channel partners and their support,” he said. “We’re seeing the partner program grow significantly. We have invested dramatically more this year in our partner program and our partner marketing program, and joint marketing funds. There’s exponential growth in there because we’ve had such good uptake from our partners on joint demand-generation capabilities going to events together. They’ve been critical to our growth in the last year, but also moving forward more and more focus on that program.”

In February, Vista Equity Partners completed its $4.6 billion acquisition of KnowBe4, taking the company private again.

“They have done just a phenomenal job of coming in and looking into our go-to-market (GTM) plans, including channel partners,” Williams said. “And they’ve had some fantastic recommendations about how we can expand the program to include more partners and better support our partners. And so we are really as a team partnering with Vista Equity and their GTM expertise to look at how can we enhance the program.” 

For the first time at KB4-Con, six integration partners, including Palo Alto Networks, are displaying how KnowBe4’s products integrate, and how partners can sell with them, Cook said.

“We haven’t really taken that out to the channel officially, so I’m really interested to see how they talk about … co-positioning going forward,” she said. “No matter the partner type, the role type of the attendee in the room, I think we’ve found a way to find value for each of them.”

The integration partners are integrating to KnowBe4’s SecurityCoach product, Williams said.

“I think that just brings new opportunities for the channel partners, not selling bundling solutions, but again that connection in security strategy and security culture,” he said.

The concept of security culture is still new to the channel and partners want to learn more about it, Cook said.

Partners are very curious about security culture, and “how do you box this up and find a way to position it to their customers and stay ahead of the market?” Williams said.

“And what we’re hearing from customers and some partners as well is that when your admins are wanting to have a conversation with the CISO or the CIO and they bring up security awareness training, it doesn’t get a lot of attention,” he said. “But when they bring up security culture, that really up-levels the conversation and they get an audience with the executives. I think it’s the same for our partners. Helping them to up-level that conversation will get them more of an audience and more attention. And so that’s what we are really hoping they walk away with, is that kind of move horizontally throughout the organization as they sell.”

The concept of security culture is still new to the channel and partners want to learn more about it, Cook said.

Partners are very curious about security culture, and “how do you box this up and find a way to position it to their customers and stay ahead of the market?” Williams said.

“And what we’re hearing from customers and some partners as well is that when your admins are wanting to have a conversation with the CISO or the CIO and they bring up security awareness training, it doesn’t get a lot of attention,” he said. “But when they bring up security culture, that really up-levels the conversation and they get an audience with the executives. I think it’s the same for our partners. Helping them to up-level that conversation will get them more of an audience and more attention. And so that’s what we are really hoping they walk away with, is that kind of move horizontally throughout the organization as they sell.”