Security awareness training company KnowBe4 Inc. today announced a new service designed to provide real-time security coaching to reduce risky behavior.

The aptly named “SecurityCoach” offers human detection and response, or HDR, that correlates, identifies and responds to tens of thousands of detected events. Events include risky security behavior among an organization’s users being generated within an existing security infrastructure.

KnowBe4 argues that with social engineering techniques such as phishing, spear phishing and other impersonation techniques being used by cybercriminals, the human factor plays an important role in protecting organizations. The 2022 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report found that 82% of data breaches involve the human factor and yet less than 3% of information technology spending is allocated to secure organizations against human risk.

SecurityCoach is designed to help IT and security professionals develop a strong security culture by enabling real-time security coaching of their users in response to risky security behavior. The service leverages an organization’s existing security stack to allow professionals to configure their real-time coaching campaigns to immediately deliver a SecurityTip related to a detected event to their users.

“With SecurityCoach, we are introducing a new product category that automates the delivery of real-time security coaching and advice to help end users enhance their cybersecurity knowledge and strengthen their role in contributing to a strong security culture,” Stu Sjouwerman, chief executive officer of KnowBe4, said in a statement. “KnowBe4 is driving a new human-centric category in cybersecurity entirely focused on helping our customers improve their security posture by inoculating their end users against security threats using our new-school security awareness platform.”

The launch of SecurityCoach comes nearly a month after it was announced that KnowBe4 had agreed to be acquired by private equity firm Vista Equity Partners for $4.6 billion. KnowBe4’s products are used by more than 52,000 organizations and the company had annualized recurring revenue of $328.3 million as of June 30.

Image: KnowBe4