One Mistake Does Not Have To Become a Breach

Employees make countless technology decisions during an ordinary workday. Most decisions happen without much thought because they are part of familiar routines. But, every so often, one of those decisions may turn out to be a wrong decision — for instance, maybe someone clicks a convincing yet malicious link, approves an unrequested authentication request, or enters credentials into a login page that appeared legitimate but isn't.

Security awareness can reduce the number of wrong decisions, but it can't completely eliminate them. A resilient security program is prepared for what happens next.

One employee action should not determine the outcome

Cybersecurity Awareness Month discussions often focus a lot of attention on individual behavior, and that attention is useful because employees really can interrupt attacks before they progress. However, organizations still have the responsibility to create layers of security around their employees. 

The NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 reflects this broader view of cybersecurity, advocating that protection should sit alongside the ability to detect an incident, respond effectively, and recover afterward. The security response matters because even strong organizations can experience a successful phishing attempt or compromised account. The difference is often what the threat actor can do once that first opening appears.

Containment starts before the incident

In an attack, a threat actor may gain access to one employee account, but the damage that follows depends heavily on what that account can access. An account with broad administrative access creates a very different situation from one with permissions limited to the employee's actual responsibilities. The same principle applies to systems. 

In the September Cyber Threat Download, Pondurance's digital forensics and incident response team discusses attacks involving compromised remote monitoring and management (RMM) tools. Because RMM tools often have extensive access throughout an environment, compromised credentials can give a threat actor significant reach very quickly. Limiting administrative access can reduce that reach before an incident ever occurs. Segmentation can help create additional boundaries between systems so that access to one part of the environment does not automatically provide a path into another. These controls give defenders more opportunities to intervene.

Employee reports become more valuable when defenders have visibility

When an employee realizes that he or she may have entered a password into a suspicious login page, the employee should immediately contact the IT team to report it. The report creates an opportunity for the team to begin an investigation of the account, looking at recent authentication activity and determining whether anything unusual happened afterward. The usefulness of that report depends on what the team can see.

In After a Cyber Incident: What to Expect, Pondurance Incident Response Manager Abbey Mirelli discusses the importance of preserving evidence and understanding the scope of an incident. With sufficient visibility, responders can know that an employee made a mistake and know whether a threat actor was able to take advantage of it. Employee awareness and security monitoring become much more effective when they work together.

Employees need to feel comfortable reporting mistakes

The first reaction to a security mistake should be to report it, but that behavior only happens consistently when employees believe reporting is safe. If employees worry that admitting to a mistake will lead to embarrassment or punishment, they may spend valuable time hoping nothing happened. Such a delay gives a threat actor more time to cause harm within an organization's system.

Pondurance's threat intelligence team encourages organizations to consider phishing amnesty programs that prioritize immediate reporting. The goal is to make raising a concern feel routine. An employee should be able to admit that he or she clicked on a suspicious link and immediately know what actions come next. A strong reporting culture turns employees into additional sources of detection.

Some incidents begin with an exploited vulnerability

Employees play an important role in cybersecurity, though they can't be expected to prevent every incident. Increasingly, threat actors are gaining initial access to systems by exploiting vulnerabilities, according to the 2026 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report. In fact, 31% of all breaches now start with exploitation of software vulnerabilities.

A vulnerable internet-facing system can create an opening for a threat actor without anyone clicking anything, which makes organizational resilience essential. Security teams need enough visibility to recognize unusual activity, response plans need to be usable when an event actually happens, and recovery capabilities need to work under pressure.

Pondurance discusses one piece of the recovery process in Cybersecurity 101: What Are Immutable Backups, and Why Are They Important? Our experts emphasize how important it is for organizations to protect backup data from the same threats that affect production systems.

Security should be built around actual humans

Employees are human. They work quickly, get distracted, receive convincing messages, and use dozens of tools that increasingly look and behave similarly. A cybersecurity program that depends on every employee making the right decision every time is eventually going to experience failure.

The better approach is to train employees to recognize suspicious situations, make reporting easy, and provide security controls that can catch what employees miss. That way, one mistake remains one mistake. It doesn't automatically become an incident that disrupts the entire organization. 

Cybersecurity Awareness Month is the perfect opportunity to make employees aware of ways they can make the cybersecurity program stronger. This week, organizations should let employees know exactly where to report a suspected security issue and what actions they can expect after making a report.

Security should not require perfect decisions

Employees are an important part of cybersecurity, and they should have strong security controls working behind them. Pondurance helps organizations strengthen those layers through managed detection and response, incident response, risk management, and cybersecurity expertise designed to reduce the impact of threats across the environment.

Learn more about Pondurance and explore ways for organizations to build more resilient cybersecurity programs.