ISO & GRC Training for banks and financial services.

Why banks train with Sterling Academy

Banks and financial services firms are judged on control. Regulators, external auditors, correspondent banks, card schemes and large corporate customers all want to see that the institution protects information, keeps critical services running, prevents bribery and corruption, and meets its compliance obligations, and that its people understand their part in each.

People are where most control failures start. A branch employee is persuaded by a caller who claims to be from head office. A relationship manager accepts a gift that should have been declined. An operations analyst forwards a client file to a personal e-mail address to finish work at home. A team skips a continuity test because the quarter-end is busy. Each of these is a failure of awareness or competence before it is anything else, and each one, when it surfaces, leads to the same question from the examiner or the auditor: what training did this person receive?

The frameworks banks work with say the same in their own words. ISO/IEC 27001 asks you to define the competence each role needs, make sure people have it and keep evidence, and to run awareness for everyone. PCI DSS asks for a security awareness programme with training at hire and at least once every twelve months. ISO 22301 asks for competence in the people who run business continuity. ISO 37001 asks for anti-bribery awareness and training for personnel, matched to the bribery risk of their roles. ISO 37301 asks for a compliance management system in which people know their obligations. In the European Union, the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), which has applied since January 2025, requires ICT security awareness programmes and digital operational resilience training for all staff, including senior management. GDPR expects people who process personal data to be trained to handle it.

Banks are also large and spread out. Staff work across branches, operations centres and countries, in shifts and on rotations. Taking whole teams off duty for a classroom day is costly. Online training that people can take on any device, in short sessions, at any hour, fits a bank's operation far better.

Sterling Academy brings Sterling's classroom training online, with the same content, available 24/7. Each course ends with a final exam, and each person who completes it receives a verifiable certificate with a QR code that an auditor, an examiner or a certification body can check. Sterling's classroom training certificates have been accepted by certification bodies at client audits, and the Academy carries the same content.

What each role in a bank needs to know

Every employee. Branch, operations and head-office staff need the same foundation: how to protect client and card data, how to recognise social engineering and fraud attempts aimed at bank staff, how to recognise and refuse a bribe or an improper gift, what compliance obligations mean in daily work, what operational resilience means for their role, and how to report a concern or an incident at once. The pack gives them ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Awareness, PCI DSS Awareness, ISO 37001 Anti-Bribery Management Awareness, ISO 37301 Compliance Management Awareness, GDPR Awareness and DORA Awareness. All six are awareness courses, so the Awareness Pass opens them and every other awareness course.

The information security team. The people who build and run security controls need each framework in depth: how to implement an information security management system, how to meet PCI DSS requirements, how to assess and treat information security risk, and how to organise the programme with a recognised framework. The pack gives them ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Implementation Training, PCI DSS Requirements & Controls Implementation Training, Information Security Risk Management (ISO/IEC 27005) and NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) 2.0 Training.

Business continuity. Continuity, risk and operations leads make sure critical services survive an outage, a cyber attack or a supplier failure, which regulators and DORA treat as a core duty. The pack gives them ISO 22301 Awareness, ISO 22301:2019 Implementation Training, Business Impact Analysis & Continuity Exercises and Risk Management.

Internal auditors. Internal audit is one of a bank's lines of defence, and management system standards also require their own internal audits. The pack gives your auditors the ISO/IEC 27001 and ISO 9001 internal auditor courses, with ISO 19011, the international guidance on auditing management systems, which applies to every management system a bank runs.

How the courses work

• Online and on demand. Learners study on a computer, tablet or phone, 24/7, at their own pace. Each course page shows the total learning time, including module quizzes, exercises and the final exam, so managers can plan it into rosters.
• Built from real classroom training. The content is the same as Sterling's classroom training, built by industry experts, domain specialist trainers and globally renowned auditors with 30+ years in ISO and GRC. Each course page has a sample video.
• Practical examples. The examples come from working organisations, including banks and financial services firms, so staff recognise the situations they meet.
• A real final exam. Each course ends with an assessed final exam. Awareness courses need 70% for the certificate; practitioner courses, which lead to a Certificate of Competence, need 60%. The retake rule is explained on each course page.
• A certificate anyone can verify. Each person who completes a course receives a certificate with a QR code. Learners can share a badge on LinkedIn.
• 12 months' access. Each course, and each pass, gives 12 months' access, which matches the yearly refresher cycle most banks run.

Courses or a pass: the cheapest way to buy

Each role card shows the courses that role needs, the price one by one, and a pass when it is close to or cheaper than the courses. We mark the cheaper option as best value and never show a saving that is not real.

For every employee, the Awareness Pass costs US$99 and opens all 65 awareness courses for 12 months. For the other roles, the card shows at today's prices whether the listed courses or a pass is cheaper, and marks that option as best value.

If one person needs most of the pack, for example a chief risk or compliance officer, the All-Access Pass opens all 16 courses on this page, and every other course in the catalogue, for US$499 per person for 12 months.

Banks usually train many people at once. A pass also removes a decision people tend to put off. Once a learner holds a pass, adding a course for a new customer, a new regulation or a new job costs nothing more for the rest of the 12 months, and that is often when the second and third courses get taken.

From 11 learners every price drops by 20% per person, and from 51 by 30%. Training more than 200 people? A Sterling consultant prepares a proposal for you.

Evidence for examiners, auditors and partners

Sterling Academy gives you three kinds of evidence.

The first is the certificate for each person: named, dated, tied to a specific course and final exam, and verifiable by QR code.

The second is the organisation console. Your training administrator invites people, assigns each person only the courses their role needs, and sees who has started, who is in progress, who has stalled and who has finished, by course and by person. People who have not started are easy to find and remind, across every branch and centre.

The third is the report. You can download training records for an examination, an audit, a correspondent bank's due diligence or your own management and board reporting.

A training plan for a bank

Start with everyone. Assign the every-employee courses to all staff, beginning with the functions most exposed to fraud, bribery and data risk: branches, contact centres, payments operations, trade finance and relationship management.

Include senior management. DORA and good governance both expect the board and executives to be trained. The awareness courses suit them, and the certificates show that they took part.

Train the control owners. Information security and business continuity teams take their courses alongside the work of building or improving the management systems, so the training supports the project.

Prepare internal auditors. Auditors complete their courses before the next audit cycle.

Repeat every year. Use the console to see whose training is due and renew it. New joiners follow the same path from their first week.

Training gaps examiners and auditors often find

Annual refreshers missed. Training at hire is common; the yearly refresher is often missed, especially in branches and operations centres.

Anti-bribery training that ignores risk. ISO 37001 expects training matched to the bribery risk of each role. Relationship managers, procurement staff and people who deal with public officials need more than a general message.

Senior management left out. Boards and executives are often excused from training. DORA does not excuse them, and auditors notice.

Continuity plans never exercised. A continuity plan that has never been tested rarely satisfies an examiner. Trained continuity leads run exercises and learn from them.

Records scattered across systems. Training run by different departments ends up in different spreadsheets. One console and one report for the whole institution makes the evidence easy to produce.

How the standards fit together in a bank

ISO/IEC 27001 gives the bank a certifiable information security management system across the whole institution.

PCI DSS protects payment card data wherever the bank stores, processes or transmits it, as an issuer, an acquirer or both.

ISO 22301 gives the bank a certifiable business continuity management system, the backbone of operational resilience.

ISO 37001 gives the bank a certifiable anti-bribery management system, and ISO 37301 a compliance management system, both of which help show regulators and partners that obligations are managed, not left to chance.

DORA, for institutions in the European Union, brings ICT risk, incident reporting, resilience testing, third-party risk and training together in one regulation.

All of these share the same management system structure, so a bank that trains its people on one finds the others familiar. One trained team and one set of training records serve them all.

Training for different parts of the bank

Different parts of a bank face different risks, and the training should follow them. The role cards cover the core, and the catalogue lets you add to them where a function needs more.

Retail branches and contact centres handle the most customer contact and the most social engineering. The every-employee courses come first, with PCI DSS awareness for anyone who handles card details over the counter or on the phone.

Corporate and relationship banking carries the highest bribery and conflict-of-interest risk, because relationship managers deal with large clients, intermediaries and sometimes public officials. ISO 37001 awareness is essential, and ISO 37301 helps them understand how compliance obligations are managed.

Payments and operations keep critical services running. Business continuity training, business impact analysis and exercises matter most here, along with PCI DSS for card operations.

Technology and information security own the controls. The information security card applies, and the catalogue adds cloud security, ISO/IEC 27002 controls and ISMS risk assessment courses for engineers who own specific controls.

Risk, compliance and internal audit oversee everything else. The All-Access Pass often suits these teams, because they need to understand every framework the bank runs and audit against several of them.

Procurement and vendor management manage third-party risk, which DORA treats as a core part of operational resilience. Supplier evaluation and second-party audit training helps them assess suppliers properly.

Services beyond training

Sterling's expert and experienced consultants help banks and financial services firms achieve ISO/IEC 27001, ISO 22301 and ISO 37001 certification, PCI DSS and GDPR compliance and DORA readiness, simply and faster: gap assessments, documentation, internal audits and support through the audit. Sterling has completed 8,100+ client engagements in 60+ countries over 20+ years.

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