Periodic Awareness Tip #11 - Superheroes

TALK ABOUT SUPERHEROES

Superheroes are in. Books are written about it. The cast from The Big Bang Theory loves comics. Movies on superheroes often are make the box office ring.

Superheroes inspire people. They do things that seem beyond the possibilities of humans. And certainly in the past, heroes mostly were beyond the reach of most people: Hercules (a.o. cleaning out the Augian stables), Beowulf (o.a. killing Grendl with his bear hands), ... However that does not have to be so. Heroes can be ordinary people who - by being courageous - do something that seemed unattainable. Stories place them in legendary or mythical surroundings: David (the one who fought Goliath), Biblo and Frodo Baggings, Harry Potter, Katniss Everdeen,... But it can be more down to earth with heroes like Winston Smith (1984) who stands up against Big Brother. In fact, the present narrative is that everybody can be a hero.     

Notice that superheroes also have to combine different lives or tasks: the normal activities and their extra-ordinary activities. That plays in the cards of the message you want to bring as a DPO: "data protection is part of your day-to-day activities".

So the use of some superhero story to overarch the awareness actions in your organisation can instill a sense of "I can do it" or even better "we can do it" among the staff. That collaborative part can be found in superhero stories amongst superheroes like the Avengers, the Justice League, Watchmen, ... but also in support of a superhero like Captain Planet.

 

I know, you should not overdo this. So you may want to limit the use of this theme. But... to reach a certain part of your audience, this may be a nice touch.

INTRO (repeating for the series)

Raising awareness amongst your company's staff is key as the human factor is quite often cited as the weakest link in data protection and security "in the field". Raising awareness also is not a one-off thing. You have to keep hitting the same nail. Preferably though, you try out different angles every time again, as information overload and boredom settle in quite rapidly. So let me periodically and in no particular order share some awareness raising materials. Let's aim for once per week and we'll see where we can get.

CALL TO ACTION

Please do comment on these posts: is this useful? what have you used in your organisation to engage the colleagues? how do you measure success? etc.