It’s often said that success comes from vision. But vision alone is just the beginning—what truly matters is the courage to act on that vision. When we founded Living Security in 2017, we already had the idea for what would become Unify, but we didn’t know exactly what it was, what it would become, or where it would take us. In 2020, we purchased the domain HumanRiskManagement.com and embarked on a journey that would forever transform our company, the cybersecurity industry, and the way businesses think about human risk. This is the story of how we didn’t just see the dot in the top right corner—we became that dot. We went all in, risked everything, and emerged as the undisputed leader in a new market.
When we started Living Security, the industry was focused on one thing: engagement. Making cybersecurity approachable to the end user was where the market’s attention was fixed, and that’s where we met it. We developed innovative, interactive experiences that made cybersecurity training fun, driving engagement and awareness across countless organizations. It was impactful, and it was working—but deep down, I knew it wasn’t enough.
The reality was that cybersecurity breaches continued to rise, and they weren’t due to a lack of training—they were due to human error. I realized we weren’t just trying to teach people how to avoid a breach; we needed to understand and address the behaviors and risks that lead to those breaches in the first place. This was more than just security awareness training. It was about managing human risk, something that didn’t exist as a defined category at the time, but we knew it was the future.
By Q4 2020, we had officially embarked on our mission to disrupt the security awareness training (SAT) market. It wasn’t easy. We were running a growing business while building a "startup within a startup." It took raising capital, threading the needle of two competing priorities, and holding on for a couple of years before we decided to go all-in on Human Risk Management (HRM). We could have taken the easy road, continuing to grow and sell what we knew—after all, it was working. But I knew deep down that continuing down that path wasn’t going to truly help our customers or solve the problem of reducing cybersecurity breaches due to human error.
So, we made the decision to risk everything. We put everything on the line and began trailblazing the path of Human Risk Management. Fast forward two years, and the results speak for themselves. Forrester has officially renamed the market to Human Risk Management. Competitors have followed suit, renaming their own approaches. And now, as Forrester prepares to go live with their first-ever Human Risk Management Wave, we stand here not just as pioneers, but as leaders. We’ve been named leaders.
But this story isn’t about seeing the vision early. It’s about the choice to go all-in—to take the leap when it wasn’t easy, when the path wasn’t clear, and when the stakes were highest. We aren’t the biggest player in this space, but we are the dominating, undisputed leader. Now, as we enter the next phase of our journey, it’s time to shift our focus from being market makers to becoming market takers.
The dot in the top right corner? That’s us now.
Download The Forrester Wave™: Human Risk Management Solutions, Q3 2024 report.