Slip, Slop, Slap...Security??

Since 1980 (…a great year), as a country we have embraced the young Seagull Sid telling us to slip on a shirt, slop on some sunscreen and slap on a hat. In more recent years, the Cancer Council brought in the SunSmart Schools program (which quirkily added seek some shade and slide on your sunnies) requiring Australian SunSmart Schools to have a written sun protection policy to achieve accreditation. A fantastic initiative.

Last week at the Security, Influence and Trust conference (which I wrote about here), there was a lot of talk about community programs that had seen success in addressing people’s attitudes and behaviours. Slip, Slop, Slap was mentioned a number of times as a memorable, transformative campaign that made our community take notice of the impacts of the sun and take measurable action. The Sunsmart Program has brought about real change in attitudes and actions through increasing the pain of non-compliance…If you’re tasked with caring for a child under the age of about 12, I’m sure you have heard the adage ‘no hat, no play, no fun today’. This new approach of not allowing kids to go outside or to be with their hat-wearing friends is enough deterrent for kids to wear one. 

The advantage of the Sunsmart Program is that kids receive a penalty for non-compliance in addition to essential education and awareness on this topic. When you compare this to information security policies in business, there are certainly valuable awareness campaigns but there are currently very few examples of true pain or consequences for those who violate known policies or those who plead ignorance after the fact. As organisations, could we learn from the evolution of Sunsmart when it comes to Information Security non-compliance ?

#informationsecurity #infosec #securityawareness