The New Face of Insider Threats: Why Human Behavior is the CISO’s Blind Spot

When it comes to modern cybersecurity, the narrative is often dominated by firewalls, endpoint detection, and zero-day exploits. Yet, as a professional social engineer with over 20 years in the field, I’ve seen more organizations breached by trust than by technology. Behind every ransomware infection or data leak is a person who clicked, trusted, or assumed. This is why, in today’s cyber threat landscape, the human element needs to be strengthened, fortified and empowered.

Human Behavior: The Exploit Technology Can’t Patch 

Even the most sophisticated systems are vulnerable when the human operating them is untrained or unaware. Cybercriminals know this. Instead of wasting time on cracking encryption, they exploit the person behind the keyboard. They impersonate coworkers, manipulate emotions, and build convincing pretexts—because it works.

This is the domain of social engineering, where psychological tactics trump brute force. And this is where many CISOs have trouble. Many times they are given limited budgets, reduced staff and far too many “holes” too patch.  On top of that, few organizations conduct regular behavioral risk assessments or teach staff how to spot manipulation in real time.

Many times, we find employees are not empowered to question authority figures, or so fearful of failure they will hide mistakes before reporting them.

Insider Threats: Not Always Malicious, Always Risky 

The phrase “insider threat” often conjures images of disgruntled employees bent on sabotage. (This is a completely different article, and a very important one.)

But more often, the threat is unintentional: a marketing director sharing sensitive client details over an insecure platform, or a junior finance associate falling for a spoofed email from a “vendor.” The marketing team uploading a business plan to an open and unsecured folder on the Internet.

In one engagement, I breached a company’s internal systems within 45 minutes of walking into the building—no tools, just a clipboard and a convincing story. I was escorted to a secure area because I “looked like I belonged.” Knowing this company was in the midst of a PCI compliance audit, I came as one of the auditors.  Carrying my clipboard, with USB keys and other hacking tools inside of it.  I was escorted to the server room to “finish the audit.”

These moments highlight the real danger: people are wired to trust, to help, and to assume good intentions. Also, when things fit, we don’t look for reasons to distrust, just the opposite we look for reasons to trust. Threat attackers exploit this, and unless organizations train for it, they’ll continue to be vulnerable.

Executive-Level Exposure 

The higher the value of the target, the greater the risk. C-suite executives often have fewer restrictions, more access, and are more widely known. This makes them prime targets.

And let’s be honest: most security protocols are not designed with executives in mind. They’re busy, mobile, and often exempted from cumbersome controls in the name of convenience. This is a mistake. High-value individuals require high-touch security education that respects their time while reinforcing their importance in the security chain.

Solutions: Where Behavioral Science Meets Cybersecurity 

1. Behavioral Risk Profiles – Conduct organization-wide Social Engineering Risk Assessments to identify individuals most susceptible to influence.
2. Executive Simulation Training – Create high-level, realistic phishing and social engineering scenarios tailored for leadership, FROM THE TOP DOWN. Yes I said it, do not exclude that C-Level.  And make it non-punitive.  Don’t just go buy a SaaS and put “Johnny” from HR at its keyboard and let him send the template of the month.  This takes a lot of thought, understanding and work.
3. Psychological Safety Culture – Encourage reporting and curiosity. Make it easier for staff to ask questions than to stay silent, empower them, don’t subjugate with fear.
4. Empathy-Based Security – Stop shaming people for falling for attacks. Instead, help them understand why it worked and how to improve.

What about AI? 

This could be a whole another article on its own, but I need to touch on it here.  AI is being used it some very serious ways by threat actors.  Here are just a few of the ways we have seen it here.

1. AI is being used to clone voices of trusted sources and then being used to make vishing calls to trick users into giving out information or performing wire transfers.
2. AI is being used to remove accents from foreign threat actors, yes that is real.
3. AI is being used to create perfectly structured phishing emails.
4. AI is being used to create “digital skins”, a digital mask they can wear to look and sound like another person, and in on recent attack this cost a company $25M USD.

These are a few of the ways AI is not being used by threat actors against CEO’s and their companies. Sadly, there is no tech out there now to just stop it, so the best we can do is to take an approach that empowers your employees.

1. Teach them to verify everything BEFORE action is taken
2. If they cannot verify in the moment, take NO action
3. Give them the tools to verify requests so mistakes are not made
4. Doing this can make the difference in suffering a breach or not.

Final Thought 

Technology continues to evolve, but humans remain constant in their psychology. Truly, scams have stayed the same for millennia.  Phishing used to be done via mail, telegram, email, text, online chat, now AI.

Until we build security programs that address the human element with the same rigor we apply to firewalls, insider threats will continue to be the soft spot in our defenses.

It’s time for CISOs to widen their lens. The next breach won’t come from a terminal—it will walk in through the front door, smiling, with a believable story in hand.

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Written by Christopher Hadnagy.
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