Building security cultures¶

Sustainable security culture emerges from organisational practices, not just awareness training. Build environments where security is natural part of how work happens.

Cultural foundations¶

Psychological safety: Safe to report mistakes, ask questions, admit confusion without fear of punishment.

Shared responsibility: Security is everyone’s job, not just security team’s job.

Continuous learning: Regular touchpoints, not annual training. Security as ongoing conversation.

Positive framing: Security enables business rather than prevents things. Protect what we care about.

Leadership modelling: Leaders visibly practise good security. Follow policies. Ask security questions.

Making security visible¶

Security champions programme: Volunteers in each department who advocate for security, answer questions, gather feedback.

Regular communications: Security tips in newsletters, Slack channels, team meetings. Short, actionable, relevant.

Physical presence: Security posters, reminders at copy machines (“Did you collect your printout?”), screen lock reminders.

Celebrate wins: Public recognition when staff catch phishing, report incidents, suggest improvements.

Storytelling: Share (anonymised) security incidents - what happened, how caught, lessons learned, improvements made.

Integration with work processes¶

Project planning: Security represented early in projects, not added at end.

Change management: Security review as normal part of change process.

Onboarding: Security integrated into first week, not afterthought.

Exit procedures: Security included in offboarding checklist.

Performance: Security behaviours considered in reviews. Reporting incidents is positive, not negative.

Measurement¶

Leading indicators: Participation in training, incident reporting rates, security questions asked, champion engagement.

Lagging indicators: Phishing click rates, security incidents, policy violations, audit findings.

Cultural indicators: Employee surveys on security perception, voluntary training attendance, security in conversation.