Human Defense Month is a perfect time to discuss this.
I’ve been going through the compensation section of the 2026 SANS Security Awareness & Culture Report, and a couple of numbers on security awareness salaries made me want to look closer.
In Europe, the average salary for a security awareness professional is €92K – about $107K. In North America, the same role averages $131K.
What stayed with me wasn’t the number itself, but what it’s set against
The same report expects that person to run simulations, training, reporting, incident coordination and communications – while also making the case, year after year, for why any of it deserves budget in the first place. That’s not really a pay conversation. It’s a priority conversation wearing a pay conversation’s clothes.
I wouldn’t turn a single salary figure into a verdict – pay varies by market, seniority, and what “awareness” even means at a given company. Make up your own mind how well that’s paid, against your own salary.
I don’t have a clear-cut answer to that. But it’s a question worth asking before you scroll on to the next salary survey.
This is where Human Defense Month comes in
Cybersecurity Awareness Month is serious enough. That’s why: Welcome to Human Defense Month 2026 – business is serious enough, let’s have some fun together this month. 🙂
October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and if you’re an awareness professional, you probably know the situation: a few empty spaces in the calendar, and you’re looking for something useful, fresh, or simply different from the usual awareness material.
We thought we could help. For Human Defense Month 2026, we’re putting together a free Human Defense Community Kit with practical content that security and awareness teams can use throughout the month. And yes – a lot of it is available in German as well as English. That matters to us.
Here’s the short version of what’s inside:
- 20+ editable cybersecurity posters in German and English (serious, funny, strange and occasionally deliberately ridiculous).
- 5 infographics with current 2026 cybersecurity facts and numbers, again in DE and EN.
- 2 games – playable online and also available as SCORM packages.
- 4 phishing simulation templates for CYBERDISE operators to import and use.
- CYBERDISE Community Edition, our free edition available all year.
- CYBERDISE V3.3, released for Human Defense Month – including a few not entirely serious Behavioral Defense Engineering (BDE) surprises 😉
Get the Human Defense Month Community Kit
Meet us at it-sa 2026 in Nuremberg
From 27 to 29 October 2026, CYBERDISE will be at it-sa in Nuremberg. You will find us in Hall 7, Booth 301a.
If you are attending, come by and say hello ☺ Sebastian and Joel and I are looking forward to meeting customers, partners, awareness professionals and everyone who wants to talk to us, not only about Behavioral Defense Engineering.
And, there is another reason to visit: You can pick up your Swiss chocolate bar. 🇨🇭🍫 Because Cybersecurity is serious enough, after all 😉
What’s new in CYBERDISE V3.3
And, we’re bringing V3.3 with us: with CYBERDISE V3.3, we’ve made a few important improvements around simulation delivery and phishing/threat reporting.
What we love most:
- Redesigned Direct Message Injection for Microsoft 365 now lets simulation emails go straight into users’ inboxes via Microsoft Graph, making delivery more reliable and reducing the usual whitelisting effort.
- Button for Gmail: We’ve also expanded the Report-a-Phish functionality for Outlook and Gmail. Simulation reports and real suspicious emails can now follow different routes, making it easier to connect employee reports with the right security workflows.
In short: easier simulations, more flexible reporting, and better integration with the way security teams already work. Of course, we also made fixes and especially improved user synchronization and the vishing engine.
Read the detailed release note · Get the Human Defense Month Community Kit
We make the human part of the solution, not part of the problem.
– Palo Stacho is CEO of CYBERDISE and a cybersecurity entrepreneur with 30 years of industry experience. He is also a board member, scale-up trainer and speaker. He lives with his family in Switzerland.
Sources
SANS Institute, SANS 2026 Security Awareness & Culture Report, 11th edition, 2026. Based on responses from more than 1,700 security awareness practitioners worldwide. Section “Action Items to Increase Team Size and Sustain Long-Term Leadership Support”. sans.org/mlp/ssa-security-awareness-report
CYBERDISE, Cyberdise V3.3: Enhanced User Management & Phishing Reporting, release note, 2026.
Further reading: 8 Hard Truths About Security Awareness Team Size (SANS 2026) We Finally Have a Flawless Security Culture Action Plan 5 Culture Challenges Destroying Security Awareness (And Why #5 is Your Silent Killer)
