Strengthening the Weakest Link: The Importance of a Human-Centered Cybersecurity Model

The human-centered cybersecurity model prioritizes human behaviors and interactions with technology to complement technical solutions like firewalls and encryption. Noble (2018) research shows that human cyber errors are responsible for 80-90% of security breaches in the U.S. and the U.K. (p. 74). These mistakes can be intentional or unintentional; humans are most often the weakest link in cybersecurity. Organizations can mitigate these human errors by incorporating psychology-based cybersecurity professionals into their cyber teams. This interdisciplinary lens will help highlight costly human-enabled errors like phishing prevention, password management, and security fatigue. Including psychology-focused cybersecurity teams will also ensure human factor assessments are conducted and cyber training is current and relative. A human-centered cybersecurity model will enhance an organization’s cyber posture by hardening the weakest link: humans.

Below are three memes that demonstrate the importance of human-centered cybersecurity.

Human-centered Cybersecurity Memes

In this meme, we have an employee who completely zones out during human-centered cybersecurity training. She thinks she just won a million dollars from an email received on the company phone. Excited, she will undoubtedly click on the link installing malware that will make its way throughout the organization.

This meme demonstrates how many employees view password management. This employee is unaware of the importance of changing passwords. They also do not understand the characteristics of a “strong” password. This individual keeps a password they have used for years because it is easier than creating a new one.

Here is a meme displaying how a multimillion-dollar cybersecurity program can be hacked because of human error. Todd is unaware that his new friend is a cybercriminal who has targeted him to hack into his company.