Stop me if you’ve heard this before: “Nobody reads emails from IT.”
As someone who worked on campuses as an IT professional, I feel your pain. You and your security team spend months putting together a robust cybersecurity awareness program, only to have your painstakingly crafted emails linger indefinitely in inboxes across campus. You worry about the next security incident, and you know that if students, staff, and faculty paid more attention to your awareness program, your institution would be better protected and prepared.
To help break this frustrating cycle, cybersecurity professionals can collaborate with campus partners who dedicate their careers to figuring out how to get target audiences to pay more attention to their messages. Let’s talk about forming an alliance with your friends in marketing and communications.
The Case for Partnering with Marketing and Communications
A strong information security awareness program is more than just an IT initiative—it’s a campus-wide campaign that, when executed properly, can be of tremendous value to your institution. But the success of your program depends on that elusive variable: human participation. You need to package your program for a variety of audiences who all have different levels of engagement with and understanding of cybersecurity initiatives. The SANS Security Awareness Report recommends developing internal communication skills; and while these skills are certainly important for your team, you don’t have to go it alone when it comes to effective messaging for your awareness program.
Meanwhile, your marketing and communications (marcomm) counterparts spend their days trying to reach prospective and current students, parents, donors, journalists, and other diverse audiences with your institution’s critical messages. They do so using a variety of channels and messengers. They’re the perfect partner for ensuring your cybersecurity awareness program resonates.
Benefits of Collaboration
In partnering with the marcomm team, you’ll unlock complementary skills, knowledge, and capabilities, including:
- Cross-Channel Communication: Your marketing team knows how to tailor messages across multiple platforms. They can help make sure your content reaches faculty, staff, and students where they are most likely to pay attention to it.
- Graphic Design Expertise: Eye-catching visuals can make a world of difference. Marketing teams can help design engaging graphics that make your cybersecurity messages more appealing and memorable.
- Communication Coaching: Marcomm pros can help your IT team build communications skills such as public speaking, delivering presentations, creating communications plans, writing effective emails and more so you can better convey the importance of cybersecurity, whether in large forums or small departmental meetings.
- Incentivizing Action: Go beyond awareness and work with your marcomm team to create strong calls-to-action (CTAs) your community will want to take to actively support your cybersecurity initiatives to minimize institutional risk.
- Relationship Building: Take advantage of marcomm’s relationships to extend your own. Security professionals need strong connections across campus to successfully establish ambassadors. When people know you, they are more apt to listen to you.
This collaboration won’t just enhance the effectiveness of your cybersecurity awareness program—it will also help you demonstrate the value IT brings to the institution. Marcomm teams can elevate your messaging to leadership, so they better understand the role IT plays in supporting the university’s mission and protecting its reputation. Plus, marcomm teams are always looking for storytelling opportunities, and your partnership will expose them to leaders in IT who deserve recognition for their commitment to security.
Making the Case to Marketing and Communications
I can already hear the objections: “Marcomm doesn’t want to work on an internal-facing project like this.” “They don’t understand what we do.” “They’re some of our worst offenders!”
I spoke with my colleague, Senior Marketing Specialist Tim Pate, who previously served as a Marketing Director at the University of St. Thomas. We discussed what would incentivize a marcomm team to partner with IT on a cybersecurity awareness program. As with all things, making your case in terms of what matters to your audience is critical. Here are some things we discussed to highlight when you present this opportunity to the marcomm team:
- Crisis Prevention: It’s highly likely that one of the things your marcomm team enjoys the least is handling crisis communications. A proactive cybersecurity program reduces the likelihood of breaches, meaning fewer crises for marcomm to manage.
- Brand Reputation and Integrity: Cybersecurity incidents diminish universities’ reputations. Students want to attend institutions where their information and data is protected. And accomplished research faculty may think twice about housing their important data at an institution with a diminished security reputation. Strong cybersecurity measures will help prevent embarrassing events that turn potential students and faculty recruits away.
- Don’t Start from Scratch: Tackling a subject as technical and complex as security may have historically prevented your marcomm team from collaborating on this subject. Luckily, you don’t need to start from scratch. The National Cybersecurity Alliance offers many helpful resources and messages you can build into your own program.
- New Content Opportunities: Marcomm teams spend lots of time mining campus for stories they can tell that show off your school. Bring them a story, and they’ll be appreciative. Maybe a new leader developed an innovative way to engage the campus community and broader community in a one-day event, or perhaps a staff member with an interesting background contributed in a unique way. These efforts often gain national recognition and/or earn awards—both of which would be highly valuable to marcomm teams.
- Enabling Campus Operations: Remind the marcomm team that cybersecurity is just as essential to the university’s operations as online registration, access to digital resources, availability of research data, and other key functions. By emphasizing this fact, you can recruit marcomm to help communicate the indispensable role cybersecurity plays alongside IT in supporting the university’s mission.
Where To Focus Your Collective Energy
If all goes according to plan, when it’s time to roll out your next cybersecurity awareness campaign, you’ll have a positive relationship with your marcomm team to make it more impactful. Here are some areas you can focus on improving together:
- Highlight Important Info: Look for all the places where you can share information about cybersecurity. Highlight eye-catching information (like the most recent phishing event) that reminds the campus community of IT’s critical role. You could even introduce a “gamified” element like a security-themed virtual escape room.
- Multi-Channel Outreach: Brainstorm the different venues you can utilize to reach all constituents—email, digital signage, campus announcements, social media, and more. Marcomm’s expertise in these areas will ensure your message gets heard. Bonus points for also working with student interns and workers who can help you get your message to their peers.
- Repeat, Repeat, Repeat: We recommend conveying a message at least seven times on seven different platforms. Work with your marcomm team to tailor your messages so they don’t grow stale.
Embracing Your New Partnership
Cybersecurity Awareness Month is a great time to start building stronger relationships with your marcomm colleagues. You might discover other initiatives throughout the year where this partnership could be mutually beneficial, such as announcing policy changes, launching new IT projects, or sending reminders on practicing good digital hygiene.
Ultimately, it’s your university as a whole that will benefit from closer collaboration between IT and marcomm. While you might operate in separate worlds and approach your work in disparate ways, it’s possible to lean into your differences to find the ways you complement each other. This Cybersecurity Awareness Month, consider reaching out to these creative colleagues—we look forward to hearing what comes of your collaboration!
Every October, Cybersecurity Awareness Month reminds us how important it is to stay safe online. Launched by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the National Cybersecurity Alliance, the initiative has grown to educate everyone—from students to business leaders to other organizations—on protecting themselves from cyber threats. The theme this year, “Secure Our World,” focuses on simple steps to secure your digital life. Whether it’s creating strong passwords, being careful about what you share online, or learning how to spot scams, these small actions can make a big difference. Cybersecurity Awareness Month aims to help you, your family, and your organization stay safe in an increasingly digital world. At Vantage, we proudly support this initiative because we believe that cybersecurity awareness and training is for everyone, and especially in higher education, can make the world a better, safer place.
This post was co-authored by Senior Strategic Consultant Susan Featherston, who advises clients on analytics, data governance, change management, organizational strategy, service and process improvement, and executive communications, and Senior Marketing Specialist Tim Pate.
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