The cyber skills gap isn’t going to disappear on its own. It’s time to embrace it and take responsibility for it. It’s up to all of us to take someone who has the desire and ability to learn and provide them with continuous training and development.” – Brian Murphy, ReliaQuest, CEO

At ReliaQuest, we make learning possible. One of the most impactful actions we can take for our customers is providing training on how to get the most out of ReliaQuest’s unified detection and response platform, GreyMatter. A knowledgeable, well-trained partner is a more effective partner. That’s why we believe in partnering with our customers and enhancing their security operations together. After all, security is a team sport.

Our passion for knowledge and our desire to share that with not only our internal teams, but our customers as well, led us to establish ReliaQuest University and begin offering training in 2018. With trainings offered on a variety of topics, ReliaQuest University was a success right out of the gates. Externally, we increased customer engagement, improved their user experience, and enhanced their knowledge of their security environments. Internally, we established a comprehensive new-hire onboarding program for all our diverse job roles. Trainings were held monthly at our Tampa offices, and grew to well over 75 training sessions per year by the end of 2019. Engagement was through the roof and outcomes were looking bright.

Enter COVID-19.

2020 was a challenging year around the globe and presented a unique set of obstacles for our ReliaQuest University training programs. On-site training? Gone. Customer site visits? Gone. Our customers’ needs? Expanding rapidly. Our resolve in meeting those needs? Hardened.

ReliaQuest University is built from the ground up to leverage all the benefits of an online learning management system. Training content, self-paced modules, and even instructor-led sessions can all be hosted online. This means that the pivot to work-from-home was something that ReliaQuest was not only well prepared for, but took full advantage of. As our customers and prospects moved to a remote workforce, how did ReliaQuest transition its training and customer partnerships to accommodate?

We knew that our mindset was going to be our most valuable asset in these times of uncertainty. We knew that we could not limit our offerings for our new-hires or our customers, so we instead chose to increase and diversify our training programs. When the world went remote, ReliaQuest University was already scheduled into the next two quarters, with some training happening just two weeks after the transition to out-of-office work. Our instructional design team was able to make the transition from in-person training to virtual, and adapt the material to a fully realized online learning program in just 3 weeks.

Working with our technical security experts and our training department, we were able to streamline our existing training sessions and even added content for our customers in order to meet the rapidly evolving needs of a remote work force. A custom-built site houses a comprehensive offering of GreyMatter training courses, with 24/7/365 access. Customers now have access to additional on-demand training on GreyMatter, which is accessed from directly within the GreyMatter platform itself.

Here, customers can familiarize themselves with the GreyMatter interface while learning how to run automation plays, configure threat hunting campaigns, search for IOCs, and more.  Through this training, customers know how to maximize the value of GreyMatter to achieve true, unified visibility across their disparate technologies, automate across the threat life cycle, and benchmark and measure their success – all of which increases confidence in their security program. That’s something we never could have offered before pivoting to online training for our customers. ReliaQuest also continues to offer GreyMatter trainings monthly with live instruction to customers via virtual meetings.

Our subject matter experts at ReliaQuest are trained extensively on not only the GreyMatter platform, but also how to train and develop our teams internally. This leadership training allows them to build even stronger customer partnerships. Since moving to remote training, we have conducted 32 trainings; with this commitment to continuously strengthening our partnerships, it’s no wonder that ReliaQuest boasts a 97% customer retention rate. When faced with a dire situation, ReliaQuest doubled down, and proved once again that we are committed to maturing our customers’ security programs and helping them achieve greater ROI across their security investments.