Close to the new year almost everyone sets their intentions and makes their plans for the new year to come, a year which will bring a new evolved better model of us.

 However, for the majority of people these visions and plans remain unfulfilled as we do not follow through.

Following through is a very interesting concept and there are many scientists worldwide examining the art of following through and achieving our goals. All scientists by now agree that success comes down to a series of habits and the people who know how to effectively create these habits achieve what they wish. Success has become an art and a science.

Habits formation has become a concept that really fascinates me as it enables me to protect more people in a more powerful way and interestingly enough it became the hottest trend for protection, the turn to people’s ability to be protected. Let me explain what I mean.

So, while I was reading about the habits of highly effective and successful people I came across the very interesting concept of setting your word of the year. This concept is about thinking what you want to be in the year ahead or how you want to feel, what you want to experience. It’s a way of setting your intentions for what to come.

The author Tonya Leigh wrote an intelligent and wise post about the emergence of the person we want to be. A work which starts from the inside out inspired by the sculpture at Brookgreen Gardens in Pawleys Island, South Carolina of a man chiseling himself out of stone.

 It’s called Self-Made Man.

It inspired me to write to you about the self-made protector. What a better way to talk to you about the latest trend in protection which is your ability to protect yourself. The emergence of human protection.

You see, systems and tools can get you so far with attacks becoming more and more sophisticated, clueless and deceptive/illusive, take it as advice from a system designer. However, your ability to control your protection by effective training which allows you to minimize as much as possible falling into this deception is a skill for survival both for your personal and business growth. Even better if you fall into an attack to have the least impact possible by applying strategic approaches. Human security is an art and most importantly it is a sustainable investment of which the rewards will be long-term enjoyed.

The first step is to find a good security architect in order to customize and make your protection setup unique. as you are unique and your threat levels are unique, your openings to attacks are different. But after that is mostly dependent on you. The truth is that no one will implement your security better than yourself since no matter how good the designer is it will depend on you to follow through and maintain that security setup.

Human factor is the fancy word for your insiders. You, your employees and any person who interacts actively with your organization (collaborators, external providers and support) are your insiders. I did mention it above that hackers need to get more creative to attack you. It does not mean that because you are a more difficult target they want to spend more time, resources, money and bear higher risk to attack you. That is why they prefer to examine and evaluate the behavior of your insiders, find an opening and, without your knowing it, you’ll have a trojan horse. This is the number one methodology they use, which makes it your top priority to train your insiders in order to avoid triggering attacks. It’s called secure behavior training and it is the only way you avoid triggering attacks orchestrated by the cyber criminals against you. According to statistics 8 out of 10 attacks are triggered by the insiders, of which 7 are done by mistake and 1 on purpose.

Want a little help?

You just purchased the best home alarm system worldwide. I mean seriously no one can get in because it is recognizing his DNA and it drops a cell in which he is captured until the police comes and collects him. It is even delivering proof of how he tried to break into your house so that you provide the right evidence in the court. I mean seriously, is there a better alarm system? Of course not. But while you are so excited you leave your house and forget to enable it and the thief gets in and steals everything!!! 

I know, I have a vivid imagination but seriously you are the most important component of your protection and your habits can make or break your security. As soon as you realize that and start acting appropriately you will achieve higher protection levels.

Interestingly enough most people believe that this better self means adding more when in reality it means getting rid of what is no longer serving you and making wise choices in the selection of the things you keep, their effectiveness and life span. That is the same with your security and protection. You want the most effective and covering solution in the long term. Most interestingly recent attacks take advantage of human behavior and habits. Thus, by focusing on closing these openings to attacks by replacing those dangerous habits with concrete protective ones is a must and the best approach to follow.

That is the message I want you to get from the self-made man who is chiseling himself out of stone. Get rid of all the habits that are withdrawing from your protection. However, a very important trick backed by science is that the only way to get rid of a bad habit is by replacing it with another one which is serving your purpose.

Once you have a habit it is encoded into your brain. It has a path so in order to alter it you must give an alternative path option to your brain to follow and every time you repeat it you make it stronger.

And because I am all about actionable security here is your today’s security boost: evaluate your habits around protection, recognize which ones are not serving you and replace those with a habit or a series of habits which add up to your protection levels. If you need assistance in doing this professionals like me are here to help you do so.

Let’s close this episode with a tweetable:

And now I would love to hear from you. Which not supportive to your protection habits are you committed chiseling in 2019?

Here is to a new emerging self who is exactly who you want yourself to be personally and professionally.

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