A series of 3 monthly blogs from Mo Amin and ‘Restricted Intelligence’.
Part 3 – Is your platform ready?
So, the content is perfect for the task in hand. It looks the ‘bees’ knees’. You’re all ready to embark on that perfect campaign, branded like a badass and planned like a military operation. So, you’ve shown it to HR, Internal Comms and Legal haven’t you? Engagement with these teams is key. Any one of them could have an issue with content. Talk to them now so you can iron out any wrinkles.
And what about the distribution platform? Is yours the kind of organisation that has multiple platforms across a bunch of regional offices? Or do you have one central point of information security knowledge such as your security intranet pages? Imagine a moon mission without breathing equipment? Wasted effort is a pain – it costs time and resources and can be avoided with some savvy planning that views the process in its entirety. That’s why it’s a ‘campaign’.
And as for uploading videos; how long will it take? This really isn’t the moment to discover the security team actually needs to provide large content such as videos to another team; Internal Comms, or an Information Management team perhaps. You need to identify and build a relationship with whoever this is. You don’t want to do this last minute; they’ll inevitably have a backlog of work. If, on the other hand, the Infosec team can upload content on their own, then make sure you know how long it takes to upload video content and is there a specific process? Can you upload them to a central repository and schedule them to be published yourself?
Finally, there’s the platform itself. You’ve got all this shiny content but it’ll stand out like a sore thumb on a neglected security intranet page. Make sure yours is up to date. If it does turn out to be a heavily-customised version of Sharepoint, WordPress or similar, these may not accommodate your creative ideas, so be prepared with a plan B. Understand your options and make the best of what is are your disposal. The absolute minimum should be a clean, elegant security intranet page with clear and simple guidance. It’s the least people deserve and expect.
So, you’ve launched that first ‘Restricted Intelligence’ episode and there’s a satisfying spike on your pages. Can your network and site handle the traffic and streaming? In today’s environment you shouldn’t have any issues, but better to be prudent. What sort of metrics are available? It all goes towards building a picture and, as they say, ‘every little helps’. What about internal social media networks – can you make use of those to lead people to your intranet pages? Of course you can.
I’m passionate about this stuff. It’s born out of my real-life experience of rolling out ‘Restricted Intelligence’. Hopefully now you’ll be fully equipped to avoid pitfalls (and pratfalls) on the road to being an Infosec Awareness Badass. Thank you for reading. I hope you’ve found it informative and maybe a bit entertaining too.
Mo