Agenda

Current security models are failing to keep up with the speed, complexity, and scale of modern software. Security professionals are doing their jobs—and yet, attacks still get through. In this session, hear the story of four people caught in the aftermath of a breach: a developer, a SecOps lead, an AppSec engineer, and a compliance officer. All working in good faith. All stuck in a broken system. This talk will introduce a new blueprint for modern software defense, modeled on the smartest of cities that have instrumented infrastructure to see, adapt, and respond in real time. Walk away with a prescriptive framework – based on context, coordination, and culture – that teams can use to stop guessing and start defending.

We’ve spent decades throwing technology at the “human error” problem, but here’s the uncomfortable truth: we’ve been aiming at the wrong layer of the stack.

This session challenges the traditional framing of user error as a nuisance and reframes it as a signal, one that can be harnesses, modeled, and even predicted. Drawing from Psybersecurity: The Interplay of Minds & Machines, we’ll explore the concept of psychographic perimeter defense, a cognitive-aware approach that fuses behavioral baselining with identity, intent, and contextual triggers. From fatigue-driven mistakes to socially engineered compliance, the firewall isn’t just filtering packets anymore; it’s filtering patterns of thought.

You’ll walk away with practical strategies for weaving behavioral analytics, adaptive policy enforcement, and AI-powered edge visibility into your defense posture, all while seeing how an effective security fabric (i.e. Fortinet’s) enables more intelligent decision-making at the boundary between humans and machines.

Why This Topic Is Important: Despite technical advances, 82% of breaches still involve the human element (Verizon DBIR). We keep pushing for “zero trust”, yet trust decisions are still being made under cognitive load, stress, or social pressure. Most orgs deploy behavior-based security reactively, if at all. What’s missing is a convergence of psychology, security design, and edge technology, one that doesn’t just monitor users, but anticipates where failure is likely to occur.

As adversaries grow more psychologically savvy (look at modern phishing kits and deepfake voice tech), defenders need an equally nuanced response. AI-driven tools and behavioral analytics capabilities offer a path forward, but only if we build the right mental models to guide deployment.

Learning Objectives:

1. Reframe “human error” as a behavioral pattern: Understand how repeated incidents stem from predictable psychological conditions (burnout, bias, cognitive shortcuts) and how these can be detected in network behavior.
2. Explore the concept of Psychographic Perimeter Defense: Learn how to apply principles from Psybersecurity to firewall, endpoint, and identity controls by interpreting user behavior as a dynamic security signal.
3. Map Security Technologies to Behavioral Controls (will use Fortinet as an example of available tools that hit certain check boxes for this initiative): Discover how SASE and ZTNA enforcement tools can move from reactive blocks to adaptive behavioral enforcement at the edge.
4. Design edge defenses that learn and evolve: Learn how to architect a perimeter that evolves with user behavior, flags abnormal decision-making patterns, and shifts policies in real time (without destroying usability).