The Engagement Design Advantage: How to Build a Sustainable Security Champions Program

In today's fast-paced digital world, where cyber threats are a constant and evolving challenge, organizations need to go beyond a traditional, centralized security team. They need a security culture that's woven into the very fabric of the company. A Security Champions program is the perfect way to achieve this, but its long-term success hinges on one crucial factor: engagement.

A Security Champions program turns employees from various teams into security advocates and liaisons. They act as a force multiplier, bridging the gap between security professionals and the broader organization. But as your program grows, how do you keep these champions motivated and their efforts visible? The answer lies in Engagement Design.

Why Engagement Design is the Game-Changer 

Managing a Security Champions program with dozens or even hundreds of participants can quickly become an administrative nightmare. Manually tracking activities, metrics, and progress using spreadsheets is not only time-consuming but also incredibly difficult to scale. It can feel like a chore for both the program leads and the champions.

Engagement Design transforms this process. By introducing game-like elements, you can create a dynamic, self-sustaining ecosystem that makes participation fun, rewarding, and highly visible. It’s about leveraging human psychology to drive positive behavior and encourage continuous learning.

A well-designed engagement system can:

• Increase Motivation: Points, badges, and leaderboards tap into people's natural desire for achievement and recognition.

• Boost Engagement: A tiered system with clear progression paths keeps champions actively involved and striving for the next level.

• Improve Visibility and Scalability: Metrics are key and collecting them manually can be time consuming. Automated tracking and dashboards make it easy to see who's contributing and how the program is impacting the organization's security posture.

Building Your Engagement Framework: Key Components 

A successful Security Champions program is built on a few core components:

1. A Point System and Tiers

Instead of a flat structure, create a tiered system with ranks, titles, or levels that champions can achieve by earning points. For example, a champion might start as a "Junior Security Champion" and work their way up to "Executive Security Champion." Points can be awarded for various security-related activities, such as:

• Reporting a phishing email

• Participating in a threat modeling exercise

• Fixing a vulnerability in their team's code

• Sharing a security article with their team

• Mentoring a new champion

• Taking a security training course

• etc.

  
  

This framework provides a clear roadmap for growth and a sense of accomplishment with each new level.

2. Recognition and Rewards 

Points and ranks are great, but tangible rewards make the effort feel real. Think beyond monetary bonuses. Rewards can include:

• Public Recognition: A spotlight in a company newsletter, a shout-out during an all-hands meeting, or a dedicated wall of fame

• Exclusive Content: Providing access to specialized security training, demos, certifications, or workshops

• Rewards: T-shirts, challenge coins, or other physical or monetary rewards that symbolize their achievement

• Career Growth: Sharing feedback with their managers or linking program participation to performance reviews and potential promotion opportunities if possible

  
  

3. Automation is Your Ally 

Spreadsheets may work at first, but they quickly become the enemy of scalability. The real power of engagement comes from automating the process. Imagine a system that awards points when a champion submits an action for a security activity they performed, or does this automatically when a Champion resolves a security ticket, completes a training module. This makes the program feel effortless for champions and manageable for the program lead. Even simple tasks of managing participants, their activity, points and level could make a huge difference and provide metrics that could be used to demonstrate the progress to the leadership and secure their support. 

That all said, the administrative tasks required to run this kind of system at scale, with structured tiers and activities, can easily become a full-time job. Manually tracking every contribution and updating progress takes valuable time away from the program lead. This is where Katilyst steps in to make a difference and help solve this challenge. It automates the day-to-day management of points, levels, and metrics, dramatically reducing the administrative burden. This allows the program lead to dedicate their energy to more critical, human-focused tasks, like creating new initiatives, nurturing the community, and turning the program’s valuable data into a powerful narrative for leadership.

The Katilyst platform provides:

• Activity Tracking: Automatically giving credit (e.g.: Points, Badges) to champions who complete security-minded tasks.

• User Dashboard: Providing real-time visibility into each champion's progress and the overall program health

• Integration: Integration with platforms like Slack or Jira could help to automate submitting some actions automatically to make the experience even smoother to the participants

• Reporting and Metrics: Participant activity data that can be downloaded as CSV files or accessed via the API can be very useful in building metrics which demonstrate the program's value to leadership, such as most active Champions, the Champions of the highest level, coverage by team, the most submitted actions, mentors and mentees, and so forth

The Vision: A Self-Sustaining Community 

With the right leader and a well-designed, engagement framework, a Security Champions program evolves from a one-off initiative into a thriving, self-sustaining community. Experienced champions can become mentors, guiding newer participants and ensuring the program's knowledge base grows exponentially.

Ultimately, this program is more than just about preventing security incidents; it's about empowering your people. You're building an army of vigilant employees who see security not as a burden but as a shared responsibility and an exciting challenge. And it all begins by finding a passionate leader and giving them the right tools to make the journey fun and rewarding for everyone involved.

Call to Action: Building a resilient security culture is a shared responsibility

• For Leaders: Your role is to identify and empower a visionary leader to drive this program. Secure the budget, provide executive sponsorship, and track the value it brings to your business.

• For Individuals: Your role is to embrace this opportunity. Whether you step up to lead the program or volunteer to be a champion, your actions will define the security of your organization.

  
  

The future of cybersecurity is not in isolation; it's in collaboration. It's about empowering every person to be a part of the solution.