Empathy in Cyber Security: ‘There Are Real People Behind Every Security Breach Statistic’ – Opinion Piece

This blog is an opinion

piece written by our current

Marketing Manager: Kerry Turney

 

 

Can you spot the difference between these two URLs?

 

Not seeing it? Neither would most people. In the second URL, the “a” is actually a different character to the Cyrillic “a” we’re familiar with when typing.

 

This is an example of the reality of some phishing attacks today. Not all of them are obvious scams with terrible grammar, but meticulously crafted deceptions designed to trick even careful people.

 

For the past month, I’ve been leading our ‘Digital Skills Gap‘ campaign at Lumina Technologies Ltd, and it all started with a question that kept bugging me:

“Who taught us how to spot these sophisticated scams we are facing today?”

 

It’s widely accepted that humans are the weakest link in the security chain – a fact backed by plenty of data (the 2024 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report found 68% of breaches involved human error).

 

Yes, humans are the weakest link in the security chain – but the language around this conversation has never sat right with me.

 

As the marketer for Lumina Technologies, I’ve noticed when reading these facts around human error, they are often lack empathy. There is a failure to recognise that there are real human beings behind these statistics.

 

One story I couldn’t shake was about a Hertfordshire business that lost over £1 million due to an employee mistake. The CEO said, “I felt for my financial controller who had fallen victim…”

 

That quote haunted me for a while.

 

I couldn’t stop thinking about how that person must have felt. How would I feel if that had been me at Lumina? The guilt, the self-blame, knowing your simple mistake put jobs and the company’s future at risk – I don’t even want to imagine the level of distress I know it would cause me.

 

This realisation became the catalyst for months of wracking my brains to create a new brand narrative for Lumina as we shifted focus to cyber security and phishing-resistant technology.

 

I’ve previously written about how I have shifted Lumina’s messaging to move away from abstract cyber threats and instead focus on the real-life workplace scenarios that can lead to a data breach – after all, this is what business leaders care about.

 

I created the Digital Skills Gap campaign to tell the human stories behind the statistics.

 

Working on this campaign has shown me that we need a more balanced approach. We need to:

• Acknowledge human error without creating a blame culture
• Remember there are real people with real emotions behind every security incident
• Recognise the reality of how people work today – how prioritising speed and efficiency combined with lack of cyber education – creates a perfect storm for scammers
• Accept that technology like phishing-resistant security can do better at protecting us from scams – but they must complement a security conscious work culture and cannot work in isolation

 

Phishing-resistant security is the future – it creates a safety net for those inevitable human moments when we’re rushed, distracted, or simply outmatched by increasingly clever scams.

 

The aim of campaign was to show that the best security approaches don’t rely solely on perfect human vigilance or on technology alone – they create a partnership where each compensates for the other’s weaknesses.

 

I’m glad that we’ve evolved beyond simply stating “humans are the weakest link” to something more constructive: acknowledging this reality while bringing empathy to the conversation.

 

The hope is that this balanced approach will resonate more with business leaders. When they see and understand both the human challenges their teams face AND the sophisticated nature of today’s threats, they’ll be more motivated to invest in comprehensive cyber security solutions.

 

Look, I’m no cyber security expert myself, I’m just the marketer whose job it is to listen deeply to the subject matter experts I work with, fantastic thought leaders like Richard McBarnet, and turn our conversations and my own research into a compelling story that resonates with the right people.

I feel closer to my objective than I’ve ever been – Now to testing it all!

Thanks for reading – Kerry.