We often look to firewalls, endpoint agents, and identity systems as our frontline defense. But in 2025, the real battleground lies not in bits and bytes, but in the choices made by your people. According to the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, nearly 60 percent of breaches involve the human element – manipulation, mistakes, or misuse. Technology is necessary, but insufficient when your employees can be tricked.
Imagine this scenario: an employee joins a video conference where voices and faces are deepfaked. A fake CFO requests an urgent funds transfer. Real encryption and strong policies are bypassed – not through weakness in code, but via trust. This exact kind of attack recently cost a Hong Kong firm over US$25 million. No system was “hacked”; human behaviour was manipulated.
Awareness training has long been a staple of security. But the core issue is not how much people know—it’s how they behave under pressure. In the moment, under stress or urgency, employees revert to habit. That gap between knowledge and behaviour is widening, amplified by AI’s ability to generate flawless social engineering content at scale.
Enter human risk analytics. Rather than asking, “Did this person pass a phishing test?” it asks, “How does this person usually act, and is today different?” By correlating signals – response speed, unusual requests, communication context, identity mismatches—you can detect and intervene in risky actions before damage is done.
Consider a junior finance analyst receiving a payment approval from a “CEO.” The system notes red flags: new payee, off-hours message, unprecedented contact. It flags the request, adds friction, and prompts verification through a known channel. If the request is reported, that behaviour is rewarded; if ignored, the system increases scrutiny for future actions. Over time, this method measures real change – faster reporting, fewer risky clicks, improved security posture.
To make human risk analytics work, organisations must instrument the human layer, personalise risk prompts without stereotyping users, keep interventions minimal and immediate, and protect user privacy and trust.
Defenders must stop thinking only about thwarting code or systems. Attackers are optimizing for human behaviour. The winning edge in cybersecurity won’t come from another tool – it will come from shaping how your people act.
Do you know how well your team would respond under attack today? Build resilience based on behaviour, not just technology. Discover how AUMINT.io helps organisations turn human risk into measurable security outcomes.