The Cyber Expert Station What Happens When You Replace a Slide Deck

Most security awareness programs open and close with a slide deck and a speaker standing behind a podium. The employee listens, checks the time, and forgets ninety percent of it within two days.

Taqueen took a different route entirely: instead of a lecture, we put a real cybersecurity expert in an open space, face to face with every participant, in a direct conversation with no slide standing between them.

That’s the Cyber Expert Station one of the strongest components of the full Interactive Cybersecurity Awareness Event, and one of the most requested stations among Saudi government entities and corporates that want genuine engagement, not just a headcount on an attendance sheet. It’s the station most likely to change a specific person’s habit, precisely because it’s built around that one person’s questions rather than a room full of generic ones.

What the Cyber Expert Station Actually Is

The Cyber Expert Station is an interactive space where a certified cybersecurity specialist stands ready to answer any question a participant raises  from the very basic to the fairly advanced. There’s no memorized script, and no fixed slide deck running on autopilot. The station runs entirely on conversation: the participant walks up, asks, listens, asks again, and maybe requests an example specific to their own department.

This open format gives every participant a genuinely personalized experience. Someone in finance will ask about protecting customer data. Someone in HR will ask about the safety of resumes and personal data. A senior executive will ask about the risks that specifically target people in their position. One expert  but a hundred different conversations across the day.

How the Expert Runs the Station in Practice

The expert usually opens with a simple, disarming question: has anyone here ever gotten an email that made them pause and think twice? That question invites every participant to bring their own story to the table, and that’s the moment the conversation stops being a lecture and turns into a real discussion.

From there, the expert uses simple visual tools  like a small touchscreen or a display board to show live examples: an actual phishing email carefully designed to look official, or a fake link that mimics a well-known Saudi bank’s website with unsettling accuracy. Seeing a real example instead of hearing a description leaves a far deeper impression.

Throughout the day, the expert also shifts between deep technical questions for people who want to go further and basic questions for those just starting their security awareness journey. Flexibility is the whole point of this station nobody feels like the conversation is above or below them.

The Topics Covered, Built for the Saudi Context Specifically

One of the biggest reasons the Cyber Expert Station works so well is that every example is grounded in the local context, not a generic translation of foreign content. Common topics the expert covers include:

What phishing emails targeting users in the Kingdom typically look like, often impersonating government entities, banks, or well-known local telecom providers.

The risks hiding in a LinkedIn profile how an attacker uses your manager’s name, your job title, and your current project to craft a convincingly personalized social engineering message.

The most common mistakes seen in Saudi workplaces: passwords written on sticky notes next to the monitor, shared logins between colleagues ‘to make things easier,’ and devices left unlocked when someone steps away.

The National Cybersecurity Authority’s (NCA) core requirements and controls, explained in plain language rather than heavy technical jargon, so employees understand why their organization is asking for certain security behaviors in the first place.

The right way to respond when something feels off: who to notify, and what the official verification channel actually is before taking any action.

Why Direct Conversation Beats Any Slide Deck

A standard lecture assumes everyone in the room has the same level and the same interests, so it delivers generic content that theoretically applies to everyone and practically resonates with almost no one. A direct conversation with a real expert addresses exactly the question worrying this particular participant, right now.

There’s a psychological angle worth noting too. Plenty of employees feel embarrassed asking ‘basic’ questions in front of a large group during a formal training session, worried about being judged.

At the Expert Station, the conversation is one-on-one or close to it, which gives participants the psychological safety to ask anything, no matter how simple it seems and those ‘simple’ questions are often exactly the gaps that matter most.

There’s also real value in the ability to ask an immediate follow-up.

When a participant asks ‘what if this happens instead?’ and gets a tailored answer on the spot, the information sticks in a way that passive listening simply doesn’t, no matter how well the slide deck was designed.

How the Station Fits Into the Full Event Journey

The Cyber Expert Station isn’t a standalone experience  it’s usually the starting point of the full Interactive Cybersecurity Awareness Event journey. Participants begin here with a general understanding of the threats and their context, then move on to more interactive stations like the Cyber Escape Room or Social Engineer vs Detective, where they apply what they just learned under time pressure and competition.

That sequencing is deliberate: knowledge first, from a trusted source you can question directly, then practical application in an environment that mirrors reality.

This order produces a much stronger cumulative impact than presenting each station in isolation.

The station is also offered as a standalone option for organizations that don’t need the full eight-station event some choose the Expert Station alone as a focused, single-day awareness session, particularly small and mid-sized organizations looking for real impact on a tighter budget.

Who Benefits From the Cyber Expert Station in Saudi Arabia

Financial companies and institutions: customer service and sales staff who field calls and messages daily need a deep, practical understanding of modern fraud tactics, and the Expert Station gives them a direct channel to ask about scenarios they’ve actually encountered.

Government entities: many need to document that the awareness training provided to employees is genuinely interactive rather than just a distributed handout, and the Expert Station meets that requirement with real, measurable engagement through participant questions and activity.

Executive leadership: senior managers are among the most frequently targeted groups in specialized ‘whaling’ attacks, and the Expert Station gives them a private space to ask questions specific to their exposure without feeling exposed in front of their own teams.

Conferences and exhibitions: adding the Expert Station as a free consultation point inside a tech expo draws visitors in and gives them something genuinely useful to walk away with.

What Makes a Good Expert for This Specific Role

Not every skilled cybersecurity professional is a good fit for this station, and Taqueen is fairly selective about who runs it. Deep technical knowledge is the baseline requirement, but it’s not the differentiator.

The person who thrives here is someone who can read a participant’s body language in the first ten seconds whether they’re nervous about asking a ‘dumb’ question, genuinely curious, or mildly skeptical that any of this applies to their job  and adjust the conversation accordingly.

Experts assigned to this role typically go through a short briefing specific to the client before the event, covering the organization’s sector, any recent incidents in that industry that are safe to reference generally, and the tone the client wants  more formal for a government ministry, more relaxed for a tech startup. That calibration is part of why the station consistently outperforms a one-size-fits-all training video, even one delivered by an equally qualified expert.

The Questions the Expert Gets Asked Most Often

Across events, a handful of questions come up again and again, and they’re worth mentioning because they reveal where general awareness tends to be weakest. Participants frequently ask how to tell a legitimate SMS from a local bank apart from a fraudulent one, since both often use similar short-code numbers and near-identical formatting.

Many ask whether using their personal phone for work email is actually risky, a habit that’s extremely common but rarely addressed directly in formal policy.

A surprising number ask about the safety of public Wi-Fi in malls and airports, since it’s something almost everyone does without thinking twice.

These patterns feed back into how Taqueen refines the station’s content over time. If a particular question keeps surfacing across multiple client events, it usually means that topic deserves more attention in the broader awareness program, not just a passing mention at the Expert Station.

A Station That Pays for Itself in Word of Mouth

Event organizers sometimes underestimate how much a single good conversation with an expert can shape how a participant describes the entire event afterward. Employees rarely go home and tell their family about a slide they saw.

They do tell people about the moment an expert showed them, on the spot, exactly how a fake bank link differs from a real one down to the pixel. That kind of story travels inside the organization through word of mouth, and sometimes outside it too, when a government client’s event gets mentioned in local media coverage of a broader awareness campaign.

For organizations weighing whether the Expert Station is worth including alongside the flashier interactive stations, this is the argument that tends to land: it’s the station most likely to be remembered specifically, by name, months later.

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Positioning the Station Within the Physical Event Layout

Where the Expert Station sits within the overall event footprint matters more than most planners expect. Placed too close to the entrance, it can create a bottleneck before participants have even reached the more visually striking stations further in. Placed too far from the main flow of foot traffic, it risks being skipped entirely by people rushing between more eye-catching attractions like Spin & Win or the Escape Room.

Taqueen’s event planners typically recommend positioning it as the first meaningful stop after registration, close enough to catch people early while they’re still fresh and curious, but with enough breathing room around it that conversations don’t feel rushed by a queue building up behind the next visitor. Getting this layout decision right has a measurable effect on how many meaningful conversations the expert manages to have over the course of a full day, and it’s one of the small logistical details Taqueen’s planning team walks through with every client during setup, well before the event itself.

Frequently Asked Questions 

Q1: How many experts are needed to cover a large event?

A: It depends on expected attendance and the length of the event. For events expecting more than 300 participants per day, Taqueen recommends two or more experts to avoid long queues that would hurt the quality of one-on-one conversation.

Q2: Can the expert handle fairly advanced technical questions?

A: Yes. Taqueen’s certified experts have deep technical backgrounds in cybersecurity and can move fluidly between simplified explanations for beginners and advanced technical discussion for those who want to go deeper, without any loss of quality.

Q3: Can the content be tailored to a specific sector like healthcare or finance?

A: Absolutely. The Taqueen team studies the nature of the client’s sector before every event so the expert arrives ready with examples and scenarios directly relevant to that industry’s specific threats.

Q4: How much space does the station require?

A: The station is quite flexible on space and only needs a small table or a relatively quiet corner, roughly 4 to 9 square meters, making it one of the easiest stations to set up in any venue.

Q5: Can the Expert Station be combined with other stations on the same day?

A: Yes, and this is the most common use case. The Expert Station typically serves as the starting point participants move through before heading into the other interactive stations in the full event.

Want your employees to get real answers from a real expert, instead of a flyer they’ll forget by next week? Taqueen puts the right expert in the right spot in your event — with a Saudi context built in from the start.

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