#CYBERSECURITY IS LIKE A SPORT — Sport and fun to raise awareness at Decathlon Technology

The European #CyberSecMonth 2022 is here and Decathlon Technology is back with a fresh internal awareness campaign!

The biggest threat any #tech company faces is a cyber attack. The risk only heightens the more your brand is known!

Every year, the Decathlon Technology communications team faces a serious challenge: targeting 100,000 Decathlon teammates worldwide across 60 countries. The whole team has to be aware of #Cybersecurity threats and must know how to deal with it.

Obviously, this is long-term work–cybersecurity awareness can’t be resolved in one campaign. Every year, there are new, more sophisticated threats.

Consequently, we run a key internal awareness campaign every year in October, for European Cybersecurity Month, along with smaller campaigns around the topic throughout the year.

Instead of stale, boring communications around a topic that generally incites fear, we decided to make our campaigns fun. Check out our last campaign from 2021. (It won an award for internal communication from the 35th COMENT! 😉)

The 2021 campaign’s dedicated website received 27,295 unique visitors and our videos received 16.5K views. It was without a doubt influential, with very positive feedback from the Decathlon team, however, it didn’t relate to a topic we all love: sports.

So our challenge this year was to maintain this ‘snackable’ communications campaign while finding a way to link cybersecurity risks to the world of sport.

Introducing a new narrative:

CYBERSECURITY #IS LIKE SPORT. Is your team ready?

VISIT THE WEBSITE

We covered more of the same topics, namely: phishing, social engineering, malware and ransomware, data privacy and information protection, staying safe online, safe email usage, mobile device safety, working in public (dangers of public wifi), securing your home and BYOD risks.

And we added some new ones: CEO fraud and impersonation, usage of proper professional equipment and keeping software up-to-date.

We applied a logic comparing the behaviors you would never commit while playing sports… Here’s a look at how it transpired:

Keep yourself injury-free and MAKE SURE YOU’RE FULLY PROTECTED. Whenever or wherever you are, make sure your connection is secured

You wouldn’t play tennis with a broken racquet. You’re more likely to lose the match IF YOU DON’T TAKE CARE OF YOUR EQUIPMENT. Make sure your software is up-to-date and functioning correctly to prevent any security issues or breaches.

Who would borrow another person’s mouthguard?! Some things AREN’T MEANT TO BE SHARED. Avoid using unprotected or public WiFi connections when using professional devices.

In addition, we ran short interviews with our security team to discuss best practices. Here, we applied the logic: “our campaign should change, but our library should get bigger”.

Like last year, we also added a series of interviews to explain staying safe online from the security experts at Decathlon Technology. Instead of making only new content, we re-used content from last year–the topic remains important and doesn’t change, but the videos are adapted to the new theme with new people and more subjects, making the library bigger each year.

Our CPE Security Officer Adeline Vilette explains how working from home is very convenient, especially considering the current context, but it does not come without its risks.

Decathlon Member Security Manager Joshua Monier breaks down how cybercriminals use fake emails that pretend to come from familiar sources to steal our data or infect our devices.

Continuing in the optic of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, 2022’s campaign will also be launched across 85 countries, we applied a 360° approach, developing the campaign across:

• Print and digital media
• A dedicated campaign website
• Internal and external social media posts
• Posters across dozens of countries
• Videos on the screens of our physical locations
• Banners on internal websites, newsletters
• Dedicated newsletters
• Radio (internal and store radio)
• Articles (blogs and media)
• Intervention group workshops, and specific meetings in countries and business units.

And then repeat, repeat, repeat to increase awareness. Like I said, 360°, we multiplied the channels so that no one gets left behind, no matter the team, seniority or location!

Interested in joining the Decathlon Technology team? Check out all of our career opportunities here.