Ensuring end-user security is a challenge to many companies because they do not take time to educate and train their personnel on end-user security. They end up using posters and memos on walls to inform personnel on security issues without taking time to educate and identify user weaknesses. This leads to a lack of effective security awareness. Companies can benefit from using human performance technology; this is an outcome-focused technology that identifies gaps in performance. Companies have been offering pieces of training to their personnel, revising companies’ policies, and implementing new technologies to address user needs. This ends up being more expensive and eventually, it does not work ineffective security campaigns. Human performance technology is an easy method that is result-oriented and can be used for effective security awareness campaigns. Human performance is effective in showing individual performance at the workplace (Chyung, 2008).
Human performance technology is a systematic procedure that can be used in security training, creating awareness, and educating on security because it looks at the desired outcomes and works to find out what causes those outcomes. It studies the behavior that leads to such outcomes and works towards enhancing those behaviors for a desirable outcome. It designs the methods to be used to acquire the desired outcome. It also redesigns the procedure. This method would be perfect for educating people in a company on security and they will understand better than just putting posters with security information. It would also lead to effective training on security to both the security personnel and the public thus leading to effective security campaigns. The role of security education is to inform the personnel on expected security attacks, how to detect them, and how to act to avoid the effects of insecurity in the company. The desirable outcome is to ensure that company’s systems are always secure. Educating the personnel and training them would be effective in ensuring security. Human performance technology is an organizational process that can be applied in a company to gain the desired outcome. It normally relies on human performance management in order to be applied in specific units of an organization. It is an accurate method that can be used to achieve the desired outcome of educating, training, and creating awareness on security in the companies (Gilbert, 2007).
The sequential label and supplies company was not aware of what was happening to their systems. They were not aware that something was wrong with their communication systems and they were not even trained on how to resolve the problem. This shows that the company was not secure. The company should take their time to educate and train their personnel so that they will always be aware of security issues. The outcome will be that they will be aware of such incidences and determine who is behind them and produce a solution without wasting time (Chyung, 2008).
The application of human performance technology would be effective if it is applied in security education and training because it will target behaviors that will aid in creating security awareness. Human performance technology also acts as a way of motivation for end-user security. This is because the outcome is observed, and it saves on time (Brethower, 1967).
Reference List
Brethower, K. (1967). Maintenance Systems: The Neglected Half of Behavior Change. In Managing the Instructional Programming. University of Michigan.
Chyung, Y. (2008). Foundations of Instructional and Performance Technology. Amherst, MA: HRD Press.
Gilbert, F. (2007). Human Competence: Engineering worthy Performance. New York: Pfeiffer, ISBN 978-0-7879-9615-4.