How Cybersecurity Leaders Should Talk About Social Engineering

Key Takeaways

• Emotional triggers drive most successful attacks: Cybersecurity leaders need to help colleagues understand the emotional susceptibilities cybercriminals exploit alongside technical concepts.
• Personalized security coaching outperforms generic training: Organizations using personalized approaches save nearly $1.9 million in breach costs by tailoring cybersecurity awareness to individual emotional vulnerabilities.
• Employees want development, not compliance: 60% of workers lack the skills they need for the future. Framing cybersecurity awareness as career development increases engagement and improves outcomes.

Human error contributes to 60% of data breaches, yet many employees still view cybersecurity as a technical domain requiring specialized expertise. Cybercriminals target emotions as much as systems, making psychological awareness just as critical as technical defenses.
Cybersecurity leaders need to shift the narrative because preventing data breaches depends on everyone spotting emotional manipulation, not just the security team mastering technical skills. In this blog post, we discuss four ways to reframe the discussion around cybersecurity so employees recognize their critical role in cyber defense.
 

Make Threats Tangible with Real-Life Examples

Most generic cybersecurity awareness training programs fail to engage employees effectively because the threats and risks they present feel abstract. People see the training as a hypothetical exercise and think, “that won’t happen to me.” To make these training programs more relevant, cybersecurity leaders need to connect social engineering tactics to real-life consequences for real people.
Regular training should use actual cyberattacks as case studies so people make the clear connection between the real world and what they’re being asked to understand.

Explain Financial Impacts and How Cyberattacks Start

One in five successful data breaches involve shadow AI usage, adding $670,000 to average breach costs as compared to organization with a low level or no shadow AI. Many employees using unauthorized AI tools don’t recognize that they’re creating vulnerabilities and risking a half-million-dollar mistake.
Take for example the cyberattack on Change Healthcare: it disrupted payment processing for healthcare providers nationwide, delaying patient care and costing billions. The cyberattack started with compromised credentials. One employee’s password fell in the wrong hands and led to widespread damage, both for companies and everyday people who couldn’t access care.

What is Shadow AI?

Unauthorized use of AI tools by employees without IT or security teams’ approval or oversight. When employees use unapproved AI platforms like ChatGPT and submit privileged data, they create cybersecurity vulnerabilities.

 

Educate on Industry-specific Threats Employees Need to Know

Organizations should discuss trends or recent cyberattacks relevant to their sector. For example:

• Financial services: Business email compromise costs organizations $6.3 billion annually.
• Manufacturing: Espionage-motivated breaches surged nearly sixfold to 20% in 2025, up from just 3% the previous year.
• Healthcare: Breach costs average $7.42 million and take 279 days to identify and contain—the longest across any industry.
• Retail: Third-party breaches doubled in 2025, reaching 30% of all breaches

Industry-specific context makes threats feel immediate rather than theoretical.

Translate Jargon into Clarity:

Remember that the average person doesn’t understand cybersecurity’s lingo. Explaining that cybercriminals use “pretexting” can be unclear to most people. Instead, describe how attackers impersonate IT support to steal passwords and credentials Cybersecurity leaders who use everyday language to translate cybersecurity risks and impacts help employees see their vulnerability clearly.
 

Apply Personalized Security Coaching

Human risk management platforms identify specific emotional vulnerabilities for each employee, revealing which triggers make individuals vulnerable and deploying targeted coaching. This personalized approach, based on observed behavioral cues, provides a tailored stream of training content to best address each person’s needs.

Examples of Targeted Coaching that Works

 

• Employees who frequently fall for obedience-based attacks receive personalized security coaching on verifying requests from senior leaders.
• Those vulnerable to urgency tactics practice recognizing time-pressure manipulation.
• Someone who demonstrates susceptibility to greed-based appeals, like free gift cards, would receive coaching on recognizing when financial gain is too good to be true.

A personalized approach like the examples above creates measurable improvement by addressing an individual’s psychology-driven behavioral patterns rather than detached hypothetical scenarios.
Cybersecurity awareness training should include engaging microlearning episodes delivered on a consistent monthly schedule, which helps to maintain an individual’s knowledge about the latest threats without overwhelming them. Three-to-four minute training sessions based on current attack vectors keep these threats fresh in employees’ minds.
Additionally, people who receive ongoing reinforcement recognize threats faster and report suspicious activity sooner, dramatically reducing organizational exposure.
 

Position Cybersecurity Awareness as Professional Development

Employees often view mandatory cybersecurity awareness training as a burden, but cybersecurity leaders who reframe this skill as valuable professional development can boost employees’ engagement with the training programs.
A report from PWC reinforces how employees see professional skills development: 77% of workers are willing to learn new skills or completely retrain, especially in light of AI-driven automation taking over various processes in their workplace.

Transferable Skills that Benefit Employees

Organizations can highlight how cybersecurity awareness training extends beyond workplace security:

• Strong verification habits at work apply to their personal and family lives
• Recognizing emotional manipulation in phishing helps spot social engineering elsewhere

Investing in personalized security coaching and human risk management demonstrates that leadership views employees as capable defenders rather than potential liabilities. This positive framing builds confidence and engagement.
 

Build a Culture that Encourages Reporting

Many cyberattacks initially go undetected because employees don’t report suspicious activity. They may be worried about false alarms or fear consequences for clicking a suspicious link instead.
When leadership encourages vigilance and frames cybersecurity positively, they start seeing higher reporting rates and faster threat detection. No one should ever fear reporting malicious activity, especially after they’ve already made a mistake.

Why is a Reporting Culture Important?

Quick reporting enables fast action, cutting dwell time and reducing attack damage. Cybersecurity teams who can remove threats from all inboxes simultaneously protect the entire workforce when one employee reports a phishing attempt.

 

Reinforce Knowledge through Regular Communication

Organizations that integrate human risk management into their broader cybersecurity strategy create resilient cultures that adapt to new threats. The combination of personalized security coaching, engaging cybersecurity awareness training, and continuous assessment builds workforce capability that reduces risk over time. Because the attack vectors behind social engineering will change, but the human nature that attackers seek to manipulate will not.
See how human risk management platforms build emotional resilience across your workforce—schedule a demo to explore NINJIO’s personalized coaching that changes behavior.
 

Frequently Asked Questions

 

Q: How often should cybersecurity leaders talk to employees about social engineering?

A: Security awareness training works best when delivered monthly through short, engaging content rather than annual training sessions. Consistent touchpoints keep threats top-of-mind and build lasting behavioral change.

Q: What emotional triggers do cybercriminals exploit most frequently?

A: The seven core emotional susceptibilities are fear, urgency, curiosity, obedience, greed, sociableness, and opportunity. Different attacks exploit different combinations of these triggers. Attack vectors will shift, but the human nature that attackers seek to exploit does not.

Q: How do you measure the effectiveness of awareness training?

A: Track metrics like phishing simulation click rates, suspicious email reporting volume, time to threat detection, and behavioral risk scores. Effective programs result in declining click rates, increasing report rates, and faster time to report over time.

Q: Should cybersecurity awareness training be mandatory or voluntary?

A: Training should be mandatory but framed positively as professional development rather than compliance. Employees who understand the personal benefits engage more authentically than those who view it as an obligatory burden.

Q: How do you talk about cybersecurity without creating fear or anxiety?

A: Focus on empowerment and resilience, rather than threats and disaster. Explain what employees can control, provide clear actions they can take, and celebrate successes. Frame cybersecurity awareness as building capability, instead of highlighting vulnerability.
 
 

About NINJIO

NINJIO reduces human-based cybersecurity risk through engaging training, personalized testing, and insightful reporting. Our multi-pronged approach to training focuses on the latest attack vectors to build employee knowledge and the behavioral science behind human engineering to sharpen users’ intuition. The proprietary NINJIO Risk Algorithm™ identifies users’ social engineering vulnerabilities based on NINJIO Phish3D phishing simulation data and informs content delivery to provide a personalized experience that changes individual behavior.