Comprehensive software reviews to make better IT decisions
Trend Micro Partners With NINJIO, InfoSec, GoldPhish, and NextTech Security to Offer Free Training Content
Trend Micro has added training content to its free Phish Insight tool, originally a simple, cloud-based phishing platform. The new training content comes from partnerships with NINJIO, InfoSec, GoldPhish, and NextTech Security. The variety of content harvested from these partnerships serves to offer users of the Phish Insight tool the ability to choose content that fits the culture of their organization. Content ranges from long lecture-style training to short animated videos.
The content is currently in a beta period. Organizations signing up during this period will have access to this training for free for six months. In November of this year, the training content will be offered as a pay-as-you-go pricing model. The phishing side of the platform will remain free after November.
Source: SoftwareReviews Product Scorecard, Accessed August 23, 2019.
Our Take
It is not hard to find free, high-quality security awareness and training content on the web. Cofense offers over 20 SCORM-compliance modules for free, and most vendors in this space have free posters, newsletters, and whitepapers providing guidance. While Trend Micro has temporarily bolstered this amount of free content, the real value-add comes in the form of a platform to host the training. This platform serves as a pseudo-LMS that allows the user to create training campaigns. Other free training content on the web is typically offered independent of a platform. Therefore, the harvester of the content must incorporate the content into their own LMS or sacrifice the metrics and automation that such a platform can offer.
Trend Micro’s plan to offer this as a pay-as-you-go model is a wise choice. Most vendors today require you to pay on a monthly or annual basis – a commitment some organizations are unwilling to make. Phish Insight’s pricing model will allow organizations to pay only for the training they need, and only for as long as they need it. I predict this to be a very attractive option to a lot of smaller organizations who previously would have had no choice but to create their own content without a platform.
To build upon the value-add of the pay-as-you-go model, the training content was gathered from four different vendors, each with a unique style of training:
- NINJIO: Short, Hollywood-style animated videos. All videos are less than five minutes in length and cover a broad range of topics. Some video modules are followed by a single-question quiz.
- InfoSec: Three video modules currently exist, all less than six minutes in length. They all focus on social engineering. The videos cannot be skipped and are a mixture of animation and slide-style formats.
- GoldPhish: A mixture of video and interactive modules exist, all under ten minutes in length. Videos are animated and text-light, with a background music track to keep a strong pace. Interactive modules consist of content that can be explored by the user in any order, but to move on all content must be viewed. There is no video content embedded within these modules.
- NextTech Security: Currently only two modules exist, both of which are 15 minutes in length and focus on social engineering. Modules consist of a series of short videos followed by a quiz question. Modules can be rushed – I was able to complete the 15-minute module within a minute. Live learning is practiced: an incorrect solution prompts text to teach the user why the correct answer is correct.
Organizations will be able to select (and pay for) training that aligns with their organizational culture. As time goes on, one can expect this library to grow to include more primary content and supplementary materials (e.g. posters) as well.