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Why the Next Security Challenge Is Human

by Nisos | May 29, 2025 | Blog

Human risk isn’t new. It’s growing faster, showing up in more places, and catching many organizations off guard. This isn’t a software flaw or a misconfigured setting. It’s a person making a decision, taking an action, or exploiting a vulnerability in trust.

Stronger controls and employee awareness programs have raised the bar. However, they don’t get to the heart of the issue. When the threat comes from a person, prevention alone is not enough. Understanding who they are and what they are trying to do becomes essential.

Whether it’s an insider leaking sensitive data, an activist targeting your CEO, a job candidate with nation-state ties, or a third-party opening the door to a breach, human-driven threats are the center of most serious security incidents today. Many organizations still treat these as anomalies rather than core security priorities.

These threats are not outliers. They’re pervasive, widespread, and they’re picking up speed.

The Real Scope of Human Risk

Human risk touches every corner of the enterprise. It includes targeted attacks on executives, insider threats, employment fraud, and the often overlooked human vulnerabilities introduced through third-party relationships. These threats frequently evade traditional controls not only because they’re more sophisticated, but because they exploit how people build trust and make decisions.

Every organization has people with influence, access, and vulnerability. Executives, board members, researchers, and frontline employees often are deeply exposed in public and semi-private spaces. Social media activity, online records, breached credentials, even casual digital habits can reveal more than most security teams realize.

Meanwhile, attackers are evolving. Disinformation campaigns, impersonation attacks, harassment, doxxing, and reputational takedowns are being used to exert pressure and gain leverage. These tactics often operate under the radar without triggering conventional detection systems.

These risks go deeper than public exposure. Fraudulent candidates are slipping through hiring processes with fabricated identities or undisclosed affiliations. Disgruntled insiders, whether motivated by ideology, financial pressure, or opportunism, can quietly exfiltrate data or sabotage operations. External partners, vendors, and suppliers frequently introduce inherent human risk into enterprise environments, where a single compromised individual can lead to widespread consequences.

What connects these risks isn’t infrastructure. It’s people. Their motives, behaviors, and access shape the real threat landscape and call for a fundamentally different way of thinking.

You Can’t Protect Against What You Don’t Understand

Most organizations have invested in systems that alert, monitor, and analyze digital threats across internal networks and infrastructure. However, when the threat comes from someone with motive, intent, and reach, those tools can be insufficient in addressing the full scope of the problem.

Attribution becomes your strategic advantage. It’s not just about identifying that something happened. It’s about identifying who is behind it.

This level of clarity is what transforms noise into action. When you know who’s behind a threat, you can engage the right teams, take decisive legal or operational steps, and prevent escalation before it happens.

Unmasking a human threat is difficult by design. It demands a blend of tradecraft, contextual intelligence, and on-the-ground experience – especially when navigating the blurred lines between digital activity and real-world consequences.

The Patterns Are There If You Know Where to Look

One of the most overlooked realities in threat intelligence is that human risk often follows a pattern.

An anonymous account escalates online rhetoric.
A social media campaign targets an executive’s reputation.
A third-party contractor begins leaking confidential documents.
A fringe group organizes a protest or physical threats.

These aren’t random events. They’re coordinated signals of a broader pattern. Without the ability to connect the dots, and to recognize the people behind the pattern, you’re constantly reacting instead of preventing.

Many security teams reach a breaking point. Alerts pile up, tools generate more noise than clarity, and fragmented data obscures the bigger picture. Human attribution requires a level of nuance and investigative rigor that doesn’t fit neatly into dashboards.

More data isn’t the solution. The real challenge is cutting through the noise to surface what actually matters – who’s behind the threat and what they’re trying to achieve.

Discover how leading organizations trusted Nisos to uncover threats, unmask adversaries, and prevent real-world harm >>

Managing Human Risk Requires a Different Kind of Program

You can’t solve human risk with technology alone. You need a framework that’s built to handle the fluid, high-stakes, and cross-functional nature of these threats.

That means:

Embedding human intelligence into executive protection, insider threat, human resources (HR), and legal workflows.
Strengthening coordination across HR, security, communications, and compliance teams.
Proactively assessing vulnerability, not just reacting to incidents.
Building consequence pathways for malicious actors – because consequences, not just containment, shut down threats and change behavior.

The goal isn’t just defense – it’s control. The objective is to understand who poses a threat, assess their intent, and take real-world action before damage is done.

A well-managed human risk program enables teams to shift from reactive to proactive, from overwhelmed to focused, and from passive monitoring to driving measurable outcomes.

For organizations with exposed leaders, sensitive IP, or public visibility, control is the difference between disruption and resilience.

Explore how Nisos helps organizations mitigate Human Risk >>

The Shift Is Already Underway

Human risk doesn’t rely on code, malware, or breached infrastructure. It exploits the public nature of identity, influence, and access – turning digital breadcrumbs into entry points.

Disinformation can shape narratives faster than facts. Personal and sensitive data exposure can create threats that no firewall can filter, and attackers are increasingly focused on targeting people, not just systems.

How prepared are you to identify the individuals behind today’s most serious threats and act before they escalate?

At Nisos, we help enterprises unmask digital adversaries and manage human risk with intelligence that drives real-world consequences.

Let’s talk.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) About Human Risk Management

What is human risk management, and why is it becoming more important?

Human risk management refers to reducing risk and mitigating threats that come from people like, insiders, job candidates, third-party actors, or adversaries, who exploit human behavior and trust. As more attacks target individuals instead of infrastructure, the risks they pose are becoming significantly more damaging.

How is managing human risk different from traditional cybersecurity threats?

Traditional security threats often focus on technical vulnerabilities and system compromise. Human risk focuses on the people behind those threats, their behaviors, their motives, and the ability to exploit relationships and trust.

How does human risk show up in organizations?

It can appear as employment fraud, insider leaks, executive targeting, third-party compromises, or disinformation campaigns. These incidents are often dismissed as isolated events, but they typically follow patterns that connect back to people.

Why do traditional tools struggle to detect and mitigate human threats?

Many of the enterprise tools focus on what’s happening within a company and its network - focusing on internal telemetry to detect anomalies in activity and behavior. Modern human risk management requires insights from both inside and outside the physical walls of the office, including the surface, deep, and dark web.

Which teams should be involved in managing human risk?

Human risk is inherently a cross-functional problem, and spans the entire enterprise. Security, legal, and Human Resources (HR) teams all play a role. Effective management requires alignment and coordination across these functions.

What role does attribution play in mitigating human threats?

Knowing who is behind a threat allows you to act quickly and effectively. Attributing the threat actor enables you to effectively shut down the threat through security, legal or law enforcement channelsAttribution is what turns digital threats into real-world action.

How can Nisos help my organization address human risk?

Nisos provides human risk management solutions that combine analyst-led white-glove services and investigations with Ascend, a client-facing SaaS platform. These solutions provide human risk and threat visibility as well as actionable intelligence that uncovers the who behind the threats. We help clients understand exposure, assess intent, and take decisive, real-world action.

About Nisos®

Nisos is a trusted digital investigations partner specializing in unmasking human risk. We operate as an extension of security, risk, legal, people strategy, and trust and safety teams to protect their people and their business. Our open source intelligence services help enterprise teams mitigate risk, make critical decisions, and impose real world consequences. For more information, visit: https://nisos.com.

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