How to Build a Strong Security Culture This Year
For many organisations, “security culture” still gets reduced to annual training, a phishing simulation, or a policy no one reads. The problem is that culture doesn’t fail because people don’t care it fails because security rarely fits how work actually happens.
This year, building a strong security culture means shifting focus away from awareness alone and towards behaviour, accountability, and operational reality.
At Bulletproof, we see time and again that the strongest security outcomes don’t come from more controls they come from how consistently those controls are understood, supported, and reinforced across the business.
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Contents
Culture starts with clarity, not fear
Security culture breaks down fastest when people don’t understand why controls exist or what’s expected of them in practice. When policies are written for auditors instead of employees, people default to workarounds.
A strong culture starts with clarity:
What matters most to protect?
What are people actually responsible for?
What does “good” look like in real scenarios?
When expectations are clear and realistic, teams are far more likely to engage. Fear-based messaging might get attention in the short term, but it rarely drives lasting behavioural change.
Leadership behaviour sets the tone
Security culture cannot be delegated entirely to IT or security teams. The behaviour of leadership especially during incidents or exceptions sends a powerful signal.
If leaders bypass controls under pressure, treat incidents as failures rather than learning opportunities, or prioritise speed over safety without discussion, those signals cascade quickly.
Organisations with mature cultures tend to share common leadership traits:
Executives follow the same security processes as everyone else
Risk decisions are documented and owned, not avoided
Incidents are discussed openly and constructively
Culture is reinforced not by what leaders say in presentations, but by how they act when trade-offs are required.
Make secure behaviour the easiest option
One of the most overlooked aspects of security culture is friction. If secure behaviour is harder than insecure behaviour, people will adapt and not in the way you want.
Strong cultures are supported by systems that make the right thing the easy thing:
Single sign-on instead of multiple passwords
Clear approval paths instead of informal workarounds
Well-defined incident reporting that doesn’t feel punitive
When controls align with how teams already work, security stops being seen as an obstacle and starts becoming part of normal operations.
Focus training on real risk, not generic threats
Traditional security training often fails because it’s too broad, too theoretical, or too infrequent. People don’t need to know everything they need to know what’s relevant to their role and their risks.
Modern security culture programmes focus on:
Role-specific threats and scenarios
Current fraud and social engineering techniques
Real examples from the organisation’s environment
This approach improves retention, reduces alert fatigue, and helps employees recognise issues when they actually matter.
Measure behaviour, not attendance
Completion rates don’t equal effectiveness. A strong security culture is measured by how people behave when it counts, not whether they clicked through a module.
Better indicators include:
Speed and quality of incident reporting
Reduction in repeated control failures
How consistently teams follow escalation paths
The ability to evidence decisions during audits or reviews
These metrics help security teams demonstrate maturity to leadership and regulators — without relying on assumptions.
Culture supports resilience, not just prevention
No organisation can prevent every incident. The real test of security culture is how well teams respond when something goes wrong.
Organisations with strong cultures:
Report incidents early
Escalate without fear
Recover faster because roles are understood
Learn and improve after each event
This resilience-focused mindset is increasingly important as regulatory expectations tighten and scrutiny increases.
Building culture is an ongoing programme, not a campaign
Security culture isn’t fixed by a single initiative. It’s built gradually through consistent messaging, realistic controls, and visible leadership support.
This year, the organisations that make the most progress will be the ones that treat culture as a strategic capability, not a side project aligning people, process, and technology around how work really gets done.
At Bulletproof, we help organisations assess where their security culture stands today and define practical steps to strengthen it in ways that are measurable, defensible, and sustainable.
Because in the end, a strong security culture isn’t about perfection.
It’s about people making better decisions, more often, when it matters most.
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