How Lloyds Banking Group is working with VIVIDA
Q&A with Katie Hewitt, senior manager of security innovation at Lloyds Banking Group
What challenge did VIVIDA help you with?
VIVIDA helped us to tackle the challenge of making the often intangible nature of cybersecurity feel as urgent and important as it is. Using their immersive visual and audio storytelling helped us make educating our colleagues and improving their awareness around security issues far more engaging than traditional methods.
How did the relationship come about and develop?
VIVIDA is a LORCA member and we partner with LORCA to create a pipeline of talented cybersecurity companies for Lloyds Banking Group so we naturally come across these types of innovative companies.
We were exploring opportunities to innovate on security education and awareness using virtual and augmented reality. After an initial demonstration from VIVIDA, we were inspired by the immersive experience they provide and ran a small internal proof of concept exercise on colleagues.
Following the success of this, we’ve worked with VIVIDA to produce an immersive education and awareness experience for colleagues to learn more about the threats posed by cyber criminals.
What was LORCA’s role?
The fact that VIVIDA was a LORCA cohort member helped us work with them at pace. LORCA has helped to facilitate the relationship and provide a suitably innovative meeting space for our creative meetings.
How did they make your job easier in terms of selling it in internally?
VIVIDA made sure they fully understood the problem we were trying to address with their solution, as well as the challenges we would face to win the support we needed to make this work internally.
They also tailored their approach to use and by working collaboratively towards a common goal. VIVIDA made this challenge an enjoyable one to face.
What challenges did you face with trialling or adopting their technology, and how has your relationship with VIVIDA changed since the COVID-19 outbreak?
The main challenge that VR presents is the limitations around scaling that experience. With VR, headsets are not widely available, so it’s difficult to ensure that enough colleagues will benefit. And making sure that decision makers see the inherent value behind the use of this technology and method of delivery will always be a challenge associated with new ways of working. However, we have been working with VIVIDA to help overcome this.
There’s also the more recent challenge related to COVID-19. The use of headsets and equipment that create that immersive experiences have been restricted in a bid to help reduce the spread of the virus. This meant we had to pivot and VIVIDA has been great at doing that. They’ve created online, interactive and immersive experiences that don’t require headsets to help educate people on cybersecurity. This highlights the transformation these companies can undertake.
How does this partnership demonstrate the value of a cybersecurity ecosystem?
Our partnership with VIVIDA has enabled us to not only benefit from their expertise, but also the expertise of LORCA and the wider cybersecurity ecosystem. We’ve been able to get a better understanding of the cybersecurity trends and challenges impacting a variety of industries through our access to the ecosystem.
Through our LORCA partnership, we’ve been able to utilise VIVIDA to give us the best method of delivering our messages in an immersive and engaging way. Our colleagues now have a beneficial, tailored learning experience that will encourage memory retention and help us keep the Group and our customers safe online.
