Curricula Brings Together Village of Cyber Security Experts In First Virtual Conference

It took near-Herculean efforts for companies of all sizes to switch to work-from-home standards throughout 2020. For Nick Santora, CEO and founder of Curricula, cybersecurity professionals had to become superheroes in order to ensure both employees and companies stay safe in all sorts of remote work environments. 

In order to improve cybersecurity training for employees across industries during these difficult times, Atlanta-based Curricula is launching its first one-day virtual conference, Curriculaville.

Our industry faces one of the biggest challenges with IT teams being tasked to be superheroes while there’s a growing threat of cyber attacks. It’s a near-impossible game to play especially with budget cuts,” Santora told Hypepotamus.

The cybersecurity space has evolved quite a bit since Hypepotamus last connected with Curricula in January 2020 following their $3 million Series A funding round.

Santora said that COVID-related shutdowns and the switch to remote work forced companies of all sizes to re-evaluate their cybersecurity needs. 

“Cybersecurity has become more of a priority for companies as their entire workforce went remote overnight. The problem is that companies also cut their budgets, leaving IT professionals struggling to find answers on how to reduce cyber risks. It’s been very difficult for companies to be even more resourceful with their decisions, as they often lack funding to get things done,” Santora told Hypepotamus. “But, we have continued to see that if companies invest in a security awareness program for all employees (including the time to build a culture of security) they can see a significant ROI.” 

Curricula uses characters like DeeDee to teach important cybersecurity training lessons

The idea of a virtual conference had been floated around the team for the last few years, but 2020 seemed to the be right time to officially launch Curriculaville. “Although we all joked and said ‘wouldn’t it be nice?’ then we all agreed, ‘yeah, that’s the right thing to do! It would be fun to just make it happen and bring everyone together,’ so we did it.”

The free virtual conference will be held during the day on Wednesday, October 28. Speakers include Expanse’s Head of Cyber Risk Michael F. D. Anaya, Cybercrime Support Network’s Kristin Judge, Sonatype’s Ax Sharma, and many more.  

For Santora, the virtual conference is an opportunity to bring together IT and cyber professionals. “I am most looking forward to being real with IT professionals about this problem and having them admit they can’t solve everything on their own. There are not many organizations that have a dedicated security awareness professional on staff. So they go and quickly buy a product that in reality doesn’t work for them or their organization,” said Santora.

“We are so excited to continue to build our powerful brand and have our customers advocate how life and career-changing Curricula has been for them and their teams. This community is going to become very powerful and we need more IT security professionals to come together, listen to each other, and realize they don’t have to battle this alone.”

 

Santora first got the idea for Curricula during his previous job stopping hackers from getting into our nation’s power grid. 

Recognizing that there was a disconnect between how employees learn crucial cybersecurity standards, Santora set out to help “IT executives sell the idea of security to their employees” by combining behavioral science and storytelling techniques on their fun phishing simulation video training platform.

The Curricula founding story has been slower than most startups, and that’s okay for me because we took our time to make sure we got this right. It’s been an honest journey fueled by hard work and the desired focus to change the norm. I can’t describe how excited I am every time we sign a new customer because it’s a new opportunity to protect another organization,” Santora wrote explaining the history of Curricula on the website. 

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