No better awareness than an angry mob

It’s funny, although in a sad way. But how quickly I’ve noticed consumers to change their behavior, often permanently, when they feel they or a family have been personally victimized by some kind of cybercrime or scam. Or even threatened by one.

JUNE 12 2026, BY NEAL O’FARRELL

I’ve been working with consumers and personal victims of cybercrimes and scams since 2003, and as head of the Identity Theft Council I’ve worked with thousands of victims of all kinds of scams.

At the same time my full-time job was creating employee security awareness programs and constantly trying to figure out ways to make awareness matter more.

I was always amazed at how quickly and often permanently consumers changed their behavior, choices, and habits when they or a family member fell victim to a crime, or even experienced a near miss.

I’ve seen countless cases when a relatively mild instance of something like credit card misuse, even where the victim wasn’t out any money, triggered an instant raft of often permanent changes.

Victims would power through the checklist I gave them – checking credit reports and credit card statements, placing fraud alerts or more permanent credit freezes, changing passwords, enabling MFA where they had previously shunned it and overall embracing a much more heightened sense of awareness and vigilance.

And not just doing it for themselves but making sure immediate and especially older family members were doing the same, and even evangelizing their newfound awareness to friends and neighbors.

In many of those cases, the changes were driven less by the fraud and much more by the anger that some stranger would even attempt such a thing. And especially if they were targeting their elderly parents or grandparents.

The sad reality is that most security awareness programs fail to improve awareness in any significant or meaningful way. So maybe it’s time to look at it differently, and maybe from the perspective of a victim.

I always wondered – what if could we trigger that same kind of personal response in a busy workplace? I mean, what a difference that would make to the entire discussion about workplace security awareness.

How we transfer that emotionally-triggered personal motivation to workplace security awareness. And what a difference that might make not just to security in the workplace but the whole conversation around the role of employees.

Instead of being dragged kicking and screaming, they might be enthusiastically volunteering to be vigilant sentries. An angry mob is rarely a good thing. Security awareness in the workplace might be the much welcomed exception.