The question of the user’s role in cybersecurity predates current times. Even 20 years ago, security experts sounded the alarm that people are the weakest link when cybercriminals attack, and it’s become a more urgent reality in subsequent years. Security problems turned acute over the past decade as malware, ransomware, and phishing became the preferred tools of online criminals, motivated by a very lucrative life of digital crime.

“It’s all about getting money,” says Ian Jansen Van Rensburg, director of Solutions Engineering at VMware. “Cybercriminals are often very intellectual, very experienced, and they ultimately work with a massive underground network to get your company’s data. They send emails to unsuspecting users and when the users open those emails, they send viruses, Trojans and so forth into the network. Ninety percent of hacks that happened inside companies result from a user unknowingly opening something in an email, or putting a USB stick into a laptop because it said something like ‘salaries’ on the side.”