Tool or infrastructure? Why it matters for HRM

Dear renegades, mavericks and deviants,

Let’s be clear: Not all HRM software is the same.

Obvious? Not quite.

Most people miss the difference between HRM tools, and HRM infrastructure. But when it comes to compounding security gains and designing for outsized impact, the difference matters.

As human risk management gains traction, more and more tools are calling themselves “HRM solutions.” And to be fair — they’re not wrong. Most do play a part in an HRM strategy. But here’s the issue: most people in your position don’t recognize the difference between a tactical tool and strategic infrastructure.

Between a point solution and a platform.

And this distinction matters. Let’s dive in.

Point solutions are tactical.

They generally solve one or two problems.

They help someone do a thing — simulate a phishing/vishing attack, send a behavioural nudge, run a training campaign, monitor one kind of signal.

They’re often very good at that thing. But they are not infrastructure.

They do not deliver across the breadth of the strategy.

They do not enable change across the system.

So what makes a genuine HRM infrastructure-level platform?

Here’s what defines it:

Behavior agnostic: It’s not tied to social engineering sims, training, nudges or any single tactic. It handles the entire range of behaviors that influence security outcomes.
Automation ready: It allows you to automate behavioural responses — at scale, in real time — using intelligent workflows and dynamic triggers. It also allows you to automate other aspects of your strategy.
Cross-domain visibility: It gives you a single view of your human risk. Across behaviors. Across people. Across systems. It’s not just about engagement — it’s about risk impact.
Orchestration over execution: It dosn’’t just deliver interventions — It lets you test, optimize, personalize and orchestrate interventions across the lifecycle.
Extensible and integrative: It’s built to integrate with existing systems and point solutions — to make them more effective, more targeted, and more valuable over time.
Scalable infrastructure: It doesn’t lock you into a fixed content set or approach. It adapts to your goals, risk profile and maturity stage. It compounds in value over time.

Why people get this wrong

Because the market is messy.

Everyone wants to be a “platform” now.

And HRM is still a fuzzy term for most of the industry.

It’s therefore no surprise people confuse feature sets with infrastructure. Or compare HRM infrastructure solutions with tools that only do one thing.

Or expect platforms to be “best-in-class” at the single tactic they’re most familiar with — even if that’s not what a software solution is built for.

What happens when you confuse the two?

You get misalignment — in strategy, spend and outcomes.

Security awareness and human risk professionals compare infrastructure to point tools — and misunderstand value
Budgets get blown on overlapping tools — without central control
Frustration builds — because expectations were mismatched from the start
Strategies fail — because the underlying architecture isn’t built to deliver them

You can’t scale a system if the foundation was designed for one tactic.

You can’t coordinate change across behaviors with a single-purpose tool.

And you can’t measure strategic value when you’re buying tactical outputs.

This isn’t “platform vs point solution” — it’s “platform and point solution”

We’re not anti-point solution.

In fact, our CybSafe platform makes them better.

We can:

Trigger behavioural nudges after a phishing failure
Orchestrate messaging across tools like Slack or Teams
Pull in risk signals from endpoint, DLP or identity tools
Drive LMS content only to people who need it
Evaluate whether any of it actually worked — based on real behavior data

We’ve learnt that the CybSafe platform value increases when we sit at the center of a smart ecosystem.

We don’t replace all tactical tools. But we sure as f*@k make them work smarter.

Strategic benefits of platforms: Why it pays off long-term

Point solutions don’t compound.

A platform does.

With CybSafe (for example), the longer you use it:

The more behavioral data you collect
The better you can target interventions
The more automation you can introduce
The more you can measure and optimize

It’s not just about solving today's challenge.

It’s about building a capability for tomorrow’s risk.

It’s about removing manual work, guesswork and rework.

This is how you take steady progressive steps along the HRM journey.

It’s beautiful, necessary and a much more intelligent way to manage the human aspect of cybersecurity risk. It’s also not difficult to do, with the right help.

Now, I’m not saying you should throw out your point solutions and tools. Just don’t mistake them for HRM infrastructure - your role is too important for you to discover you’ve made this mistake.

If you want to learn more about how to structure your program to deliver better human risk outcomes, rather than just more security awareness inputs - book some time, let’s talk.

Want to see what else I’ve shared about human risk in previous weeks? Check out the older newsletters here.