Your People Are Your Perimeter (And They’re Clicking Things They Shouldn’t)
- Scott Crabb
- Oct 1, 2025
- 3 min read
Remember when we thought locking the office doors and installing a shiny new firewall kept the bad guys out?Those were the good old days… back when the biggest risk was someone forgetting to shred a fax.
Fast forward to now: your employees are your new perimeter. Their inboxes are the front gate.Their passwords are the padlocks.And the hackers? They’re not battering your digital walls anymore — they’re politely asking your staff to open the door… and too often, someone does.
The Human Factor Is Still the Hacker’s Best Friend
According to the 2024 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, 82% of breaches involve human error. Eighty-two percent.That means if cybercrime were a team sport, the human side would be throwing most of the assists. And hackers know it. Why spend hours cracking your firewall when they can send a “You missed a delivery” text or an email pretending to be the CFO?It’s cheaper, faster, and sadly, still effective.
The Problem with Check-the-Box Training
Plenty of companies run annual cybersecurity awareness training.You know the drill: an hour-long video with cheerful stock actors warning you about suspicious links, followed by a 10-question quiz that everyone aces… and then promptly forgets. That’s not a culture shift.That’s a compliance checkbox. It’s like teaching someone to drive by showing them a slideshow of traffic signs — they pass the test but still stall at the first intersection.
Rethinking Cybersecurity Awareness
Effective Cybersecurity Awareness Training (CSAT) is not about “once and done.”It’s about building a habit — the kind that makes someone pause before clicking “Download attachment” on a random email from “FedExx.”
The best programs:
Use short, consistent lessons — because attention spans are shorter than ever.
Include real-world phishing simulations that keep employees on their toes.
Offer just-in-time coaching (think of it as the pop-up GPS voice saying, “Re-route… bad link ahead”).
Turn employees into active defenders, not just passive checkbox tickers.
The ROI (or, How to Avoid Buying Your Own Ransom Note)
The price of ongoing awareness training is tiny compared to the cost of a single ransomware incident. Downtime, reputation damage, regulatory penalties — they all add up fast.
In one organization we worked with at Runtime Cyber Defense, phishing click-through rates dropped by over 70% in just three months after they rolled out ongoing training. That’s not just progress — that’s fewer sleepless nights for the IT team.
Leadership Sets the Tone
If your executives don’t take training seriously, neither will anyone else.Cybersecurity isn’t just an IT thing; it’s a leadership thing.
When leaders:
Take part in phishing simulations themselves,
Talk about cybersecurity at all-hands meetings, and
Recognize employees who report suspicious activity,
…it sends a clear message: “This matters here.”
A Culture, Not a Checkbox
Cybersecurity culture isn’t about turning employees into paranoid robots who never open an email again. It’s about giving them the tools, habits, and confidence to spot the bad stuff — and building a culture where reporting a suspicious email is celebrated, not ignored.
Remember: your employees aren’t the weakest link. They’re your first line of defense… if you train them.
Final Thought (and a Little Humor)
We can buy all the fancy tools we want — EDR, SIEM, MDR, and more acronyms than the alphabet soup aisle.But if Dave in accounting still reuses “Password123!” for his bank login, the bad guys don’t need to hack your firewall. They’ll just hack Dave.
So here’s the challenge to leaders:Stop treating awareness training like a compliance chore. Start treating it like the business-critical investment it is. Because in today’s world, your people really are your perimeter.
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