Jamf Security Lounge: Cyber mindfulness — Reducing risk during a stress epidemic

In this episode of Jamf Security Lounge, Jasmine and Yvonne Eskenzi, co-founders at The Zensory, and Christine Gordon-Bennett, Cybersecurity Awareness Manager at the Nedbank Group, join host Aaron Webb to talk about how The Zensory improves employee well-being and reduces the impact of social engineering attacks.

The Zensory

The Zensory is a science-backed workplace platform offering educational and accessible tools aimed at improving performance, focus and well-being. This app has immersive sensory experiences and courses written by professionals to help people avoid burnout and stay mindfully focused. The Zensory helps prime employees when starting their workday, perform better and remain in a flow state and process the tasks they’ve finished by helping them decompress.

The Zensory encourages “Mindful Security” — when users are stressed, unfocused or rushed, they aren’t always mindful enough to vet social engineering attacks. The Zensory found that surveyed users of the app reported:

• 70% reduction in phishing clickrates
• 98% of respondents had improved well-being and reduction in stress
• 96% of respondents felt more conscious and alert when answering emails

This goes beyond the standard user. Cybersecurity professionals are in an intense, understaffed industry, and burnout is common. The Zensory found that:

• 47% of cyber security incident responders have experienced burnout
• 51% of people in the industry have experienced depression and/or anxiety
• 54% of professionals want to leave because they are overwhelmed by their responsibilities

The Zensory aims to reduce burnout by helping employees relax, focus and recover with binaural beats, breath work and other sensory experiences.

How Nedbank uses The Zensory

Nedbank is a large bank based in South Africa. Employees today are coping with workplace changes and other conflict outside of their organization’s control, leading to exhaustion and distractibility. To combat this and support their employees, Gordon-Bennett started a cyber mindfulness campaign, joining forces with The Zensory and Nedbank’s HR department.

This campaign brought cyber mindfulness to employees’ attention, helping them understand why being attentive and intentional about emails or messages they receive is important for cybersecurity. Nedbank found that after the initial portion of this campaign, the number of phishing clicks in their phishing simulations were reduced by 70%.

Nedbank continues to keep mindfulness in front of mind for their employees with training, survey, simulations and roadshows showcasing their ideas.

Tips for cyber mindfulness

The episode closes with suggestions on how to encourage cyber mindfulness in your organization:

• Make cyber mindfulness fun and personal so people are engaged and take it seriously.
• Find someone to join forces with, such as a well-being or HR team, and try to make it more engaging than traditional cybersecurity training.
• Ask for feedback continuously from people using offered mindfulness tools.
• Encourage employees to find mindfulness outside of technology.
• Find a passionate ambassador to encourage cyber mindfulness.
• Be creative when finding ways to engage with employees.
• Advocate for company support and budget.

To learn more about The Zensory, visit The Zensory website, fill out their contact form or view The Zensory in Jamf Marketplace.