Identity is something we talk about every day.
Usually in logs, tokens, sessions, privileges, permissions.
Rarely as something human.
Inside Baited, identity isn’t an abstract concept. It’s something we trip over constantly, sometimes technically, sometimes psychologically. Identity is what breaks when a phishing simulation succeeds. It’s what bends when someone clicks “approve” even though something felt slightly off. It’s what attackers impersonate when they don’t need to break anything else.
Working in cybersecurity means living with a permanent identity paradox: we know how fragile digital identity is, yet we still rely on it for everything.
Identity looks clean on diagrams
On whiteboards, identity is elegant.
Boxes. Arrows. Authentication flows.
User → IdP → Resource.
Everything makes sense.
In real life, identity is messy.
It’s an employee joining in a rush and getting access “temporarily”, it’s a contractor account that survives three offboardings. It’s an API token created for testing that becomes “too important to rotate”. It’s a voice message that sounds exactly like the CTO and triggers instinct before reason.
Most identity failures don’t happen because people are careless.
They happen because people are human.
The quiet pressure of always being verified
Inside a security team, identity fatigue is not theoretical.
We feel it too!!
Endless MFA prompts. Login challenges across environments.
Switching contexts between customers, tools, sandboxes, clouds.
At some point, the brain optimizes for speed.
That’s when identity stops being a conscious decision and becomes muscle memory.
And muscle memory is easy to hijack.
Identity attacks work because they exploit rhythm, not ignorance.
Trust is not binary inside a team
There’s an idea that security people “don’t trust anyone”.
That’s only half true.
We trust patterns.
We trust consistency.
We trust familiarity.
Inside Baited, we talk a lot about how attackers exploit social trust that already exists. They don’t invent relationships: they reuse them. They don’t force access, they inherit it. That’s why identity resilience isn’t about paranoia.
It’s about awareness of normality.
When something looks almost right, that’s when we slow down.
Machines don’t get tired. Humans do.
Machine identities don’t suffer from cognitive overload.
Humans do.
One of the recurring conversations inside the team is how much security assumes ideal behavior from people who are anything but ideal. People multitask. They rush. They get interrupted. They work late. They trust colleagues. They want to be helpful!
Identity systems that ignore this reality don’t fail gracefully. They fail catastrophically.
That’s why simulations, training, and awareness must mirror real pressure, not sanitized scenarios (et similia).
Identity as culture, not just control
Security culture is often framed as discipline.
We see it more as literacy.
Understanding identity means understanding how systems interpret you, not how you see yourself. It means knowing when your digital shadow doesn’t match your physical reality. It means recognizing when authority is being impersonated, not asserted.
Identity awareness is a mindset you carry, not a checkbox you complete.
The Swiss 🇨🇭 paradox: calm systems, chaotic humans
Our HQ runs on precision: clocks, schedules, processes.
And then there’s reality.
Someone forgets to lock their screen while grabbing a coffee.
Someone almost approves an MFA request they didn’t initiate.
Someone spots a detail that saves everyone else.
Security isn’t about perfection.
It’s about catching the anomaly before it becomes normal.
Often, that happens over raclette, after-hours conversations, or a “wait… that’s weird” moment someone dares to voice.
Why Identity Month matters to us
Identity Month isn’t a campaign theme, it’s a mirror.
It forces us to look at how often security narratives blame users instead of systems. How often identity is treated as static when it’s fluid. How often tools are trusted more than human judgment.
Inside Baited, identity resilience means designing defenses that assume humans will be human and helping them recognize when their identity is being borrowed.
Because in the end, the strongest signal in any system is still a person saying: “something doesn’t add up”.
BRUCE’S COMMENT
“Humans celebrate identity with usernames. Machines celebrate it with permissions. Attackers celebrate both”.
Chief Marketing Officer • social engineer OSINT/SOC/HUMINT • cyberculture • security analyst • polymath • COBOL programmer • nerd • retrogamer
