At National Life Group, we take the protection of our employee, agent and policy holder sensitive information very seriously. In fact, it’s the responsibility of everyone in our organization, including our vendor partners, to ensure personal and financial information is protected.
One of the most effective strategies to protect data is education and awareness at all levels of the organization. This is the main reason the NLIT security team hosts 1-2 security awareness events every month. In fact, the results from our regular phishing tests indicate National Life employees and partners take this very seriously as indicated by our industry leading scores.
Building on our education and awareness strengths, the NLIT security team recently hosted two, 40-hour, training courses focused on information security. These courses were designed to prepare the participants to take the CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional) certification exam. This designation is recognized globally as the standard for security professionals.
Thirty one participants including National Life employees and our vendor partners (NTT, C2 and Cognizant) attended one of two sessions in our Vermont office via Norwich University. Roughly 2/3 of the participants spent two evenings and an entire weekend in training covering a variety of security topics and studying a one thousand-page text book. For those wishing to pursue their CISSP certification, they must pass, with a 70% or better score, a 3-hour exam that covers everything in the training.
Normally this training and exam is meant for those in security roles but in this case, we opened it to anyone in IT because improving our security awareness benefits the entire organization. NLG’s Chief Information Security Officer, Shuk Khader, commented, “Securing information is critical to our success and the level of participation by our employees and vendor partners continually demonstrates this commitment to protecting company assets and our people.”
Given the level of participation in this course, the IT team intends to host more security related training on a regular basis on both campuses. The security team would like to thank all the participants that took time out of their work schedule and those that spent their evenings and weekend in training to ensure we had adequate coverage during these sessions.
If you have any questions or have suggestions on additional trainings please feel free to reach out to Tony Hashem or any member of the security team.