With $50 billion in assets, over 3,000 employees, and 54 banking offices, Western Alliance Bancorporation is the #1 best-performing of the 50 largest public U.S. banks in the new S&P Global Market Intelligence listing for 2020 and has a recurrent presence in Forbes’ “Best Banks in America” annual list.
Western Alliance CISO, Victor Vinogradov, leads a team that oversees risk management, and security awareness, among other cybersecurity areas of attention.
“The work landscape has gone through a dramatic shift, and it’s important to find innovative ways to empower and educate employees in a way that is both convenient and effective for them.” – Victor Vinogradov, CISO of Western Alliance Bank.
With the norm of remote and hybrid work, each employee household has become an extension of the corporate network, taking the term ‘distributed enterprise’ to a new level.
Security Awareness training has to adapt to these realities and cater to individual learning curves and learning styles to ensure engagement and long-term knowledge retention.
I would highly recommend Right-Hand’s Ally platform to others looking for a way to empower their employees to learn more about cybersecurity in a fun and engaging way.
Victor Vinogradov
CISO
Contrary to traditional e-learning and annual video training, Ally sends mobile and email push notifications that gently nudge users into playing 1-minute games. These reflect real-world security scenarios they’ll face daily, complete with leaderboards, incentives, badges, and rewards.
Western Alliance Bank decided that employee convenience and flexibility are the keys to engaging its workforce in order to build a more robust security culture. According to Victor, “Offering the flexibility of a mobile app, web browser, and email push notifications for training allow users to consume content in their preferred method of how they work.”
Ally also incorporates Adaptive Learning into its training philosophy. The app utilizes Artificial Intelligence to autonomously deliver personalized learning nudges to each user based on their unique training needs and risk profile for “in the moment” coaching.
“This Adaptive Learning concept was unique to what I’ve observed in the security awareness industry. Most solutions deliver brush stroke training campaigns for all users, but Ally created unique curriculums for each user based on what they needed to know.”
As part of the financial system, engaging the workforce in cybersecurity training is a priority for Western Alliance Bank. And for that purpose, the idea of “shaking things up” from traditional training piqued Vic’s interest to find new ways to instill strong cyberculture.
“We do other compliance-based training, but Ally was able to help us deliver continuous and complementary education to make sure the knowledge sticks, rather than an exercise that just checks the box.”
Ally is engaging, different, flexible, automated, device agnostic and aligns with our goals to be a cutting edge bank that both finds ways to accommodate and empower our people while utilizing technology to stay a step ahead of the evolving threat landscape. And from what I understand from Right-Hand’s CEO, their Ally roadmap becomes more compelling with additional integrations like Microsoft Teams, Slack, and others to nudge users where they prefer to work and learn.
Victor Vinogradov
CISO
Ally is a gamified app that delivers personalized and gamified training nudges to users for in-the-moment education based on their risky behaviors and cyber awareness knowledge gaps.
See how Ally can support your organization here.
Right-Hand Cybersecurity provides a Human Risk Management platform to help organizations measure and reduce their employee cyber risk.
