CUSTOMER STORIES | AUROR
How cyber security training helps Auror reduce theft and organized retail crime
As its international presence grew, Auror wanted to make sure they were protecting their staff from cyber-attacks, both by following effective cyber security practices and by making online training programs available to their team. Having a consistent level of cyber security awareness across their organization was important to them, and they were looking for well-presented content they could access from anywhere.
With all this in mind, Auror chose SafeStack and are seeing excellent results.
Auror is the platform for retailers focused on preventing crime, reducing loss, and making stores safer.
Founded in New Zealand and working with some of the best and largest retailers in the world across Australasia and North America, Auror empowers the retail industry to reduce theft and organized retail crime (ORC), which is a $100 billion problem globally.
ORC is a high-volume crime that’s putting people, retailers, and communities at risk every day, and that’s why Auror is on a mission to connect people with intelligence that helps reduce crime.
They’ve successfully built a high-performing, positive company culture with a focus on providing an inclusive environment for its diverse people.
Auror’s entire team of 70 is enrolled in SafeStack’s Security and Privacy Awareness program, which helps them build general cyber security knowledge and skills and learn how to apply these in their day-to-day work.
They also have their developers and quality assurance testers — about 20 people altogether — doing the Secure Development program, which teaches them how to weave security throughout their software development lifecycle.
“We’re a lean, forward-focused startup, and our team needs to learn practical, useful, and up-to-date cyber security information — so SafeStack’s high-quality, concise content works well for us.”
Rob Fonseca-Ensor
VP of Engineering, Auror
Making sure everyone stays secure
One of Auror’s key motivations for putting cyber security training in place was the knowledge that cyber-attack techniques like social engineering and ransomware are becoming more sophisticated and attackers are becoming more creative. They knew the most secure technology in the world wasn’t going to help if their team didn’t know how to protect themselves and their customers.
Auror has always been conscious of cyber security risk, and had previously been running internal training sessions to keep their staff up-to-date with cyber security practices. However, as their team grew rapidly, it became more challenging to keep the level of training consistent across the organization, and they began to look for other ways of achieving this.
Taking a holistic approach to giving everyone the practical knowledge and tools they need to stay secure online was a priority, so Auror wanted a solution that offered easily accessible and concise content that staff could work through at their own pace.
SafeStack’s programs ticked both of these boxes.
Rob Fonseca-Ensor, VP of Engineering at Auror, had worked with SafeStack founder and CEO Laura Bell before, and saw her security industry experience and reputation as a guarantee of the quality of SafeStack’s programs.
I already had a lot of faith in SafeStack. I knew there would be a focus on practical, pragmatic information that would actually make a difference.
Rob Fonseca-Ensor, VP of Engineering
Training accessible from anywhere, at any time
When they introduced their staff to SafeStack’s programs, Auror’s leadership team explained how important it was to build a strong cyber security culture and the value they would all get from this training, both as an organization and as individuals.
Rob says, “The ability for people to do the training when it suited them, with a team progress dashboard was very useful. Especially with COVID-19 lockdowns, it’s really helpful for people to be able to pick their own time.”
The courses have great real-world scenarios that make it easy for me to remember how to be more secure at work, and at home. I liked how they were broken down into chunks that I could do over time, and they’d made what traditionally would be a pretty complicated hard-to-understand subject really accessible to anyone.
Tanya Johnson, VP Product
Building cyber security into every day
The wider Auror team now has a better understanding of what to watch out for when it comes to potential cyber-attacks, while developers and testers have a much more consistent body of understanding for secure software development.
Completing the Secure Development program has helped their engineering team get on the same page, which brings the added bonus of making their code reviews faster.
When asked about the initial reaction to SafeStack, Rob mentioned, “Hearing people across the whole business use phrases from the training in day-to-day conversations has been really great”.
Thinking about SafeStack’s impact on Auror so far, Rob says it’s built knowledge and skills across the team that makes the organization more secure and helps everyone feel more confident — not to mention giving them peace of mind around security that safeguards the company and its user community.
We’re so glad we can support Auror in the important work they’re doing and we look forward to following their journey as they keep making the world a safer place.
I was super happy that closed captions are available. As a deaf person, this reduced my cognitive load and I was able to get through the courses with ease.
Alister Coyne, Director of Design
Try out SafeStack with your team
Chat with one of our team to learn how SafeStack help your entire team build secure software.