When a cybersecurity incident hits, the first reaction is always the same — triage, isolate, restore. We move fast. We patch, block, and rebuild like our lives depend on it. And in a way, they do. Building a strong cybersecurity human firewall is essential in preventing such incidents.
But here’s what most people don’t talk about: the emotional impact behind the response.
When the alarms go off, it’s not just systems being compromised — it’s trust. Trust in our technology, in our teams, and sometimes, in ourselves. To maintain cybersecurity, creating a robust human firewall is crucial in these times.
The Unseen Damage
After any breach, there’s a checklist — incident reports, log reviews, containment steps, notifications. It’s clean, structured, procedural. But behind those procedures are people who feel like they’ve failed. Engineers who replay every decision. Analysts who can’t stop wondering what they missed. Leaders who feel personally responsible, highlighting the necessity of a human firewall in cybersecurity.
I’ve seen this firsthand — in both IT and in life.
Long before Undermined became a book, it was a real story about loss. About realizing that no matter how strong your firewalls are, you can’t patch human trust.
What I went through wasn’t just about stolen crypto. It was about watching confidence drain away — line by line, transaction by transaction — while realizing that the system I believed in was never built for protection, only profit, emphasizing the need for a cybersecurity strategy that includes a human firewall.
That same feeling exists in corporate breaches too.
Behind every “resolved” ticket is a human being who has to sleep knowing something slipped through. Something they couldn’t catch, underscoring the importance of a human firewall in cybersecurity.
The Human Firewall
Every company preaches the idea of a “human firewall.”
We run phishing simulations, host security awareness trainings, and send out those all-too-familiar reminders: “Don’t click links from unknown senders.”
But that phrase — human firewall — it’s deeper than we think. It’s not just about caution. It’s about character. About resilience. About standing firm when everything around you starts to collapse. Truly, cybersecurity requires this human component as a firewall.
When your systems go down, your people, as part of the cybersecurity human firewall, are the ones who bring them back up. When your network gets breached, your integrity is what decides how you respond.
In my case, after being undermined — literally and figuratively — I learned that incident response isn’t just a cybersecurity process. It’s a life skill.
It’s what you do after you’ve been breached by betrayal, by failure, by loss.
Post-Incident Recovery
The hardest part of any incident isn’t containment — it’s confidence.
Restoring systems is one thing. Restoring belief is another.
After the hack that inspired Undermined, I had to rebuild from nothing. Not just the data, but the mindset. I had to learn to respond, not react. To step back from the chaos and see patterns. To investigate what failed in me the same way I would investigate what failed in a network. A cybersecurity approach that incorporates a human firewall is critical.
And that’s the lesson I keep coming back to:
True incident response is about more than fixing what broke — it’s about understanding why it broke in the first place.
Because whether it’s a cyberattack or a personal one, recovery doesn’t end when the systems come back online.
It ends when you do.
Closing Thought:
We can train machines to detect threats in milliseconds. But humans still carry the scars long after the logs are cleared. That’s why I’ll always believe that cybersecurity, at its core, isn’t just about defense. It’s about endurance and building a robust human firewall.
