10 Cybersecurity Training Tips for Security Awareness Month 2025

Security Awareness Month (October) 2025 is upon us, and CISOs face the challenge of creating impactful security programs that change behavior—not just check compliance boxes. Here are ten strategic approaches that will maximize security awareness investment and create lasting organizational change.

1. Educate and Train Employees on Personal and Professional Security

Focus on helping employees protect themselves and their families, and the workplace benefits will follow naturally. The most effective security awareness programs focus on making people more cyber safe in their daily lives, not only when they are working in the office. When employees learn best practices to protect elderly parents from fraud or secure their children’s devices, they apply the same secure practices while at work.

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2. Use AI to Your Advantage

AI is integrated into the threat landscape, but most organizations aren’t entirely certain how to use and address it within their organizations. AI is a top priority, but security organizations must debunk the myths and educate employees on AI misconceptions. Security leaders should focus on AI-enhanced social engineering and deepfake detection and teach practical detection techniques rather than theoretical AI concepts.

3. Embrace Security Awareness All the Time

Security leaders should use October to launch a year-long program of focused content delivered consistently to end users across the organization—rather than expect everyone to consume security education content during just one month. Kick off a year-long security program in October, rolling out monthly focused topics throughout the year.

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4. Make Trust a Key Theme in Security Training

Cybersecurity requires trust validation. Security leaders should structure their security awareness programs around trust concepts, including personal identity security, communication trust, email verification, system trust, software integrity, and information trust. Help employees learn how to better navigate the world of increasing misinformation everywhere.

5. Encourage Active, Hands-on Learning for Cybersecurity

Update your education program to show employees what social engineering threats and other AI-driven attacks actually look like. Practice smarter security with real examples and detailed breakdowns of what employees should notice and avoid in social engineering attacks. Security leaders can record actual social engineering attempts or create realistic scenarios to conduct interactive sessions where employees identify red flags.

6. Create Security Education Tracks for Different Groups

Security leaders can create distinct tracks for different job functions such as technical, financial, sales/marketing, administration, and management. For instance, AI awareness for IT teams will require different information and messaging than what a sales or marketing team needs to learn. Organizations can develop role-specific awareness tracks with common foundational elements and then tailor examples and applications relevant to each department’s responsibilities.

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7. Implement the "Head, Heart, and Hands" Model

Ensure awareness activities include three components: head (cognitive), heart (emotional), and hands (practical). The Head, Heart, and Hands Model addresses three critical elements: cognitive, which provides the logical explanation and data to help employees understand the why; emotional, which connects with employees’ values, beliefs, and feelings to resonate more with them emotionally; and practical, which focuses on the practical application of how to be cyber safe with tips and tools to enable employees to take action.

8. Take Advantage of Free Government and Industry Resources

Research and leverage valuable free resources such as CISA's cybersecurity training platform, FBI and U.S. Cyber Command speakers, National Cybersecurity Alliance materials, and DHS campaign resources to create a superior security awareness program. In some cases, security leaders can book free speakers from the FBI, for instance, for lunch-and-learn sessions. Companies can even customize CISA’s free materials with their branding for consistent messaging.

9. Establish an Internal Security Champions Network

Informal ambassadors or security champions across an organization’s departments can scale more easily than a centralized training program. Employee peer-to-peer programs can create evangelists who are trusted among end users and empower them to deliver high-level security messages to their teams. These programs featuring enthusiastic, trusted peers can be more successful than providing just top-down messaging.

10. Measure What Matters With Security Awareness Training

Security leaders should track beyond traditional completion metrics to also measure behavioral indicators, such as password manager adoption rates, MFA enrollment, security incident reporting frequency, and internal sharing. The goal isn't simply awareness—it's about behavior change among end users.

Security Awareness Month 2025 should mark a shift to behavior-focused education. By making it personal, leveraging current threats like AI, and creating sustained engagement through internal champion networks, CISOs can build security-minded workforces that protect both personal and professional assets—and truly build a culture in which security becomes second nature.

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