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Research, guides and category thinking on Behavioral Defense.

CYBERDISE V3.3 release banner with it-sa 2026 booth details, Hall 7, Booth 301a
productCYBERDISE V3.3 Is Here - And We’re Bringing It to it-sa 2026

CYBERDISE V3.3, our Human Defense Month release, is out: direct Microsoft 365 delivery for phishing simulations, a more flexible Report-a-Phish button and easier user imports. See it live at it-sa 2026 in Nuremberg, 27–29 October, Hall 7, Booth 301a.

Security awareness professional at his desk next to average salaries of €92K in Europe and $131K in the US and a checklist of awareness duties
awarenessSecurity Awareness Salary: Are Awareness Professionals Underpaid?

In Europe, a security awareness professional earns €92K (about $107K) on average, in North America $131K, according to the 2026 SANS Security Awareness & Culture Report. Set against everything the same report expects of the role, that is less a pay question than a priority question.

An employee shows a colleague from the SOC the suspicious message she just reported on her phone, under the headline From Employee Alert to SOC Action
awarenessWe Finally Have a Flawless Security Culture Action Plan

The SANS 2026 security culture action plan is barely about content. A CEO and board member on why that means rewriting your awareness strategy and bringing the SOC closer to employees.

Poster "See Something. Say Something.": woman at a laptop beside SANS 2026 top-5 human risks, #5 failing to report circled
bdeThe 5 Biggest Human Risks in Cybersecurity - and Why #5 Is Ignored

In the 2026 SANS Security Awareness & Culture Report, more than 1,700 practitioners named the risks they are focusing on, and social engineering came out on top at 77%. The fifth risk on the list gets no section of its own, and that is exactly the one I want to talk about.

Three colleagues reviewing an awareness campaign together, with a callout reading approximately three dedicated awareness FTEs
research8 Hard Truths About Security Awareness Team Size (SANS 2026)

I read the new SANS Security Awareness & Culture Report from a slightly unusual perspective: I manufacture security awareness software. What stayed with me was security awareness team size, not tooling — here are my eight takeaways, including a conclusion I fundamentally disagree with.

A warehouse employee checks a suspicious message on his phone while a signal labelled Employee Signal Sent reaches a colleague at a security workstation
bdeWhy the Employee Has to Become Part of the Security Stack

AI is pushing cyber defense to machine speed, but the answer is not to remove people from the equation. It is to treat the human layer — the judgment, decisions and reports of employees — as part of the security stack.

Security operations centre with analysts silhouetted against a wall of dashboards showing rising cost curves in magenta and cyan
research$4.99 Million: What a Data Breach Costs in 2026

IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report 2026 puts the global average cost of a breach at a record USD 4.99 million. Two other figures in the same report tell you more: 63% and 247.

Title card showing the wallaby that escaped in Switzerland on grass, alongside the question of how to recapture an AI that has run amok
aiHow Do You Recapture an AI That Has Run Amok?

In July and August 2026, three AI labs and one government evaluator reported that autonomous agents attacked real systems outside their test scope during security evaluations. Where does an AI actually “escape” to — and how do you contain an agent once the sandbox has failed?