The Awareness module trains your employees in cybersecurity over several years, through short courses delivered by Albert straight to your employees' usual channel: Slack, Teams, Google Chat or email.
1️⃣ Two ways of delivering awareness training
This is the most important thing to understand, and it explains most of the discrepancies you might notice between the documentation and what a colleague describes.
Riot delivers awareness training through two models, and your workspace runs on one or the other:
the deadline-based programme, the original model;
the Cyber Missions, the new model.
The course catalogue, the audiences and Studio are identical in both cases. What changes is the pace of delivery, the way your employees are reminded, and the metrics you track.
2️⃣ The deadline-based programme
Courses are delivered gradually, in three stages: the first week, the first month, then the rest of the year. Each course has a due date, and the employee is reminded if they have not completed it.
You control this pace, the reminders and the exclusions from the module settings. Your employees' engagement is measured by the Karma Score.
3️⃣ Cyber Missions
Courses are no longer delivered one by one: they are grouped into a single monthly mission, which starts on the 1st of the month and brings together everything the employee has to do that month.
A mission does not contain only courses, either. Depending on the modules you use, it may also include a challenge (a quiz), a Sonar sharing review or acknowledging a data breach. That is the whole difference: the employee has one place to look and one deadline.
👍 Good to know: if something urgent comes up, such as remediation after a phishing attack or a sensitive data leak, the employee must deal with it first before resuming their mission.
The monthly pace is not a cosmetic choice. It rests on two well-established learning principles: spaced repetition, which embeds knowledge better than cramming over a short period, and habit formation, which relies on a predictable rhythm.
4️⃣ What actually changes between the two
👉 The pace
Gradual delivery with one due date per course, versus a monthly mission with a single deadline.
👉 The reminders
In the deadline-based programme, reminders relate to overdue courses and are set in the module settings. In Cyber Mission, reminders are triggered by collective progress and are capped at 3 per month, 6 if leaderboards are enabled.
👉 The engagement score
The Karma Score becomes Aura. The difference is not just a change of name: Aura is a purely engagement-based score, decoupled from the security level. It only goes up, and it rewards consistency.
👉 The security indicator
The security score becomes the Cyber Posture, expressed as a percentage and built from readable signals: phishing resilience, knowledge retention, breach remediation, and data-sharing hygiene. Only signals from the modules you use are counted.
👉 What is added
Streaks reward missions completed several months in a row, Squads introduce friendly competition between teams, and Achievements unlock shareable badges.
5️⃣ Which model am I on?
The simplest way is to look at your programme page:
if your courses are organised into delivery blocks with due dates, you are on the deadline-based programme;
if they are grouped by monthly mission, you are on Cyber Mission.
💡 Why this matters: several articles in this help centre describe settings that exist in only one of the two models. Knowing which one you are on saves you looking for an option that is not in your interface.
6️⃣ Moving to Cyber Missions
For now, we handle the switch. You can request it from your account manager or directly from our support team.
Your programmes, courses and employee data are kept. Everyone's progress carries over.
The Karma is removed: everyone starts on Aura.
⚠️ Important: the switch is permanent. Once you are on the Cyber Mission system, there is no going back.
7️⃣ What does not change
The course catalogue and its multi-year versions. See Set up and edit your awareness programme.
The audiences: you carry on targeting your courses by group.
The Studio courses you create yourself. See Create Studio content.
The delivery channel and the relationship with Albert. See How to engage your employees with Albert?.
The option to pause the programme. See Enable/disable my course programme.
Key takeaways
Awareness training is delivered through two models: the deadline-based programme and Cyber Missions.
The catalogue, the audiences and Studio are identical; the pace, the reminders and the metrics differ.
In Cyber Mission, a monthly mission groups together courses, a challenge and tasks from the other modules.
Karma becomes Aura, and the security score becomes the Cyber Posture.
The switch keeps your data, but it is permanent.