The Human Factor In cybersecurity
Jayden Maddox
From 10/17/21

There are many different assets that go into cybersecurity. Two of those assets are the various
advancements of technology in the cybersecurity field and the people trained to operate behind
that technology. Companies also have to be very smart with their budgeting between both of
these assets. There can be a few different ways a company can manage a budget and balance the
tradeoff between training and new technology.
Even though it might be more expensive I would personally put more effort towards the
technology-based assets and not as much on training human employees but not remove them
from the picture entirely. I would put most of my budget toward a more automated or
technology-based asset because an automated system can process and hold more information
faster than a human can. Humans can often make mistakes and in the cybersecurity world
mistakes can be crucial to the security of important documents and an entire company all
together. On the other hand, automated technology systems can be programed to have the
slightest chance of ever making a mistake.
Now there are a few reasons I would not put all of my budget toward the technological side and
put some aside to train human employees. Some threats are dependent on the cooperation of
humans. Humans play a big role in any technology field because the systems and AI used are
programed by humans and machine intelligence simply cannot match up to human intelligence.
Cybercriminals often find ways to adapt machine learning and find ways to bypass networks
without being detected, which is another reason humans are important in the cybersecurity field.
The security monitoring systems also require human attention and human interaction. This is
how I would spread my budget between training human employees and enhancing technology.
Citations:
https://www.cyberbitsetc.org/post/cybersecurity-as-a-behavioural-science-part-1
https://www.csoonline.com/article/3275930/the-impact-of-human-behavior-on-security.html