Naglotech Editorial Team

~ Tuesday, September 30, 2025

Why Your Employees Matter More Than Ever

In today’s hyper-connected world, cybersecurity is no longer just the domain of IT teams or specialist security professionals.

Instead, every employee plays a pivotal role in safeguarding an organisation’s digital assets, reputation and operations. In essence: the best (and sometimes only) firewall is the person seated at their desk.

Cybercriminals know this too, which is why many of today’s attacks are designed to exploit human behaviour rather than bypass technology. The organisations that thrive are those that empower their people to recognise and respond to threats quickly and confidently.

Attackers Target the Human Element


While firewalls, intrusion detection systems, endpoint protection and zero-trust architectures are essential, many attackers start with the easiest path: people. Phishing, social engineering, impersonation, credential stuffing and malicious attachments are often successful because humans are generally trusting by nature and may click on things they shouldn't.

According to Huntress “your employees are the first line of defense against a cyber attack." Their Managed Security Awareness Training (SAT) platform is built on exactly that premise: make employees adept at spotting threats before damage occurs.

Shared Responsibility is Core to Modern Security


Microsoft emphasises that cybersecurity is a shared responsibility; that while Microsoft handles the infrastructure, cloud platform and many foundational protections, it is up to organisations (and their employees) to secure their data, access, identity and adoption practices. In other words: good infrastructure is necessary, but not sufficient.

Moreover, Microsoft has openly shifted to treating security as everyone’s job. For example, security efforts are now formally woven into performance goals and evaluation metrics for many employees, which  underscores how seriously even big tech firms now view the human factor.

Prevention is Far Less Costly than Remediation


When an employee catches a suspicious email and reports it, the cost is minimal. But when a breach occurs, the financial, legal, reputational and operational fallout can be profound. The ROI of even modest training programs can be enormous when viewed through the lens of avoided incidents.

Huntress points out that their training does more than just “check the compliance box”. Instead, it aims to achieve real security outcomes without the headaches.

Building a Culture of Cybersecurity 

Turning employees into active defenders isn’t just about sending them a one-off slide show. It requires a culture shift, ongoing reinforcement and the right tools.

1. Start with Awareness and Contextual Learning

  • Use relatable content: real examples from your industry, stories, microlearning modules rather than long lectures. Huntress designs its modules to be engaging, story-based and built on neuroscience principles to aid retention

  • Educate on modern threats: phishing (and evolving variants), social engineering, supply chain risks, insider threats, etc

  • Tie training in with real roles: employees in finance, sales, HR, development etc. will face different risks - custom content helps enormously.

2. Launch Phishing Simulations to Test and Reinforce

  • Run regular (e.g. monthly) phishing simulations based on real threat intelligence. Huntress includes this as a core feature.

  • Use “phishing defence coaching” for those who are finding it more difficult to spot cyber threats. 

  • Monitor your metrics: click rates, reporting rates, repeat offenders and trends over time.

3. Make It Easy with Reward Reporting

  • Provide a simple “Report Phish” button or similar. Low friction really is key.

  • Acknowledge and reward those employees who report threats. This reinforces the behaviour and encourages engagement.

  • Share anonymised “near misses” and lessons learned (without blame) to build a collective vigilance. It's a continuous journey which is constantly evolving rather than singling out individuals that make errors.

4. Integrate with Technical Controls

  • Enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) everywhere.

  • Use least privilege access, role-based access control and just-in-time privilege elevation.

  • Deploy endpoint detection and response (EDR) to catch what slips through.

  • Monitor logs, alerting and response pipelines so that human alerts feed into technical processes.

5. Leadership and Accountability

  • Tie security KPIs into your overall management goals.

  • Regularly review and adjust your training program based on incident trends.

  • Ensure continuous improvement: threat landscapes change, so training must evolve too.

Final Thoughts


No matter how sophisticated your technical defences, your employees will often be the battleground between your organisation and a successful breach. The good news? With the right training, tools, reinforcement and culture, they can shift from being a vulnerability to being your strongest line of defence.

By leveraging platforms such as Huntress’ Security Awareness Training and Microsoft Defender, your business can create a proactive and robust cybersecurity strategy.

You can discover more by visiting our Cybersecurity and Compliance page.

Ready to speak to someone? Contact us today.
Call Naglotech on 01255 745745 or email info@naglotech.com

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