🍬 Gummy Bears: a digital safety incentive program for teams

🤔 Who this is for

This is a template that anyone can use to encourage teams and organizations to take quick steps to upgrade their organizational security together.

🔑 Key concept

Make a donation every time the team completes an assigned task. Check in every day to reward and nudge them.

🧠 How it works

Select 1-2 people to be the project leads. This can be a team member who’s in charge of digital security, an outside expert or both. These people should then:

• Meet with the team to learn about their digital safety needs.
• Analyze where you think there are gaps in their safety and privacy practices.
• Meet with them again to go over relevant digital safety concepts (e.g. password length, data policy).
• Make a customized checklist of 8-10 steps that the team should take in order to improve their security.
• Send the checklist to the team and set a deadline to complete the checklist.
• Agree on an organization that the team is interested in donating money to.
• Check in every day to:
  • See if the team has finished any steps on the checklist. If so, make a fixed amount donation 🍬 for every completed step.
  • Answer any questions.
  • Remind the team that there are unfinished steps in their checklist (aka nag them).
• Offer a bonus donation 🍬 if the team finishes everything before the deadline.

You may also choose instead to send the team one checklist step at a time, and only reveal the next step once it has been completed. We’ll let you be the judge of what works best for the team you’re working with.

🐾 Example steps

Previous teams who used this safety incentive program went through steps like these:

• Pick and set up a password manager for the team.
• Draft an internal data access and retention policy.
• List out all the accounts and devices used for work, review who has access, and make sure they all have unique, long passwords.
• Have every team member secure their individual devices using the Zebra Crossing checklist.

🕒 Last updated

30 October 2020