Human Risk Management
Unlock Actionable Human Risk Management Insights
Identify your top human risk drivers and take the most effective steps to prevent the next breach.
Understand and manage human risk across your organisation
Bring together in-depth insights into risky behaviours, permissions, data handling and more across your collaboration tools in a unified human risk management (HRM) workbench. Then leverage AI-powered guidance and automated enforcement to meaningfully reduce your human risk.
Identify high-risk users and groups based on real behaviour signals, not broad campaign metrics.
Orchestrate structured, automated mitigation pathways that guide intervention at scale.
Track behaviour trends over time with defensible metrics aligned to business risk.
Human risk remains the most exploited attack surface
Attackers target people, not just systems, and everyday actions across email, collaboration tools and agentic workspaces can introduce risk. Without in-depth insight into where human‑driven risk is greatest, security teams struggle to reduce exposure or prevent incidents. Clearer visibility into human behaviour and its real-world impact on security is key to measurable, long-term risk reduction.
Identify and prioritise concentrated human risk
Proofpoint Human Resilience Workbench captures behavioural signals from Collaboration Security Prime to surface your critical areas of human risk. Automatic grouping of users by risk attributes enables your team to prioritise mitigation based on real behaviour, not assumptions or test metrics.
Risk Profiles
Group users by shared high-risk behaviour to focus intervention where it will have the greatest impact.
Behavioural Risk Scoring
Continuously translate user actions into defensible risk indicators aligned to business exposure.
Adaptive Segmentation
Dynamically segment users based on real-time behavioural signals instead of static user attributes.
Shared Security Visibility
Align visibility for SOC analysts and awareness practitioners in a unified workbench experience.
Pre-Integrated Risk Signals
Unify behavioural, training and threat signals into one risk model with no manual integration or third-party data stitching.
Built-In Risk Weighting and Scoring
Apply predefined weighting across threat, awareness and data risk to surface higher impact signals without custom tuning.
Deliver targeted risk mitigation at scale
Turn risk insights into coordinated actions that reach the right users at the right time. Human Resilience Workbench automatically directs users to targeted ZenGuide training paths, teaching secure behaviour with precision and consistency.
Templated Mitigation Pathways
Standardise your approach across risky user groups with structured, risk-based intervention paths.
Automated Audience Formation
Auto-enrol users into targeted paths based on their specific behavioural signals and Risk Profile.
Guided Training Orchestration
Deliver AI-guided phishing simulations, communications and training programmes through ZenGuide.
Workflow Automation Engine
Reduce manual campaign management with scalable, state-aware workflow automation.
Out‑of‑the‑Box Risk Prioritisation
Surface ready‑to‑use risk profiles and prioritised user groups with no need for custom configuration or data engineering.
Measure and demonstrate human risk reduction
Get ongoing visibility into behaviour trends and overall risk across your organisation. Translate user activity into clear metrics that help security leaders track progress, align programmes with business risk and communicate impact with confidence.
Continuous Risk Trend Reporting
Monitor shifts in behavioural risk over time to evaluate your programme's effectiveness and maturity.
Executive-Ready Dashboards
Deliver clear, defensible views of human risk aligned with leadership and board-level priorities.
Behavioural Progress Tracking
Track improvements across users' Risk Profiles to validate the efficacy of targeted mitigation.
Cross-Functional Insights
Align your security operations and awareness teams with shared visibility into human risk insights.
Operational Consistency at Scale
Use a shared risk model across teams to reduce manual work, simplify upkeep and ensure clear, defensible measurement.
Proofpoint vs competing HRM solutions
| Features | Proofpoint HRM | Traditional HRM |
|---|---|---|
| Multi‑level risk scoring at org, department and user levels, with trend tracking |
Yes
|
No
|
| Correlated, prioritised view across threat, data and awareness risk categories |
Yes
|
No
|
| In‑product mitigation recommendations with rationale, task lists and target groups |
Yes
|
No
|
| Automated enforcement using human risk scores across email, DLP, identity, insider threat protection and security awareness |
Yes
|
No
|
| Native signal coverage across email, identity threat defence, enterprise DLP, insider threat and user education |
Yes
|
No
|
Future-proof with Collaboration Security Prime
Gain deep human risk management insights across internal and external threat protection, DLP and user awareness with Proofpoint Collaboration Security Prime. With cross-channel context and visibility, you'll reveal emerging human risks earlier for faster, coordinated response.
Explore related resources
FAQ
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How does human error relate to security risks?
Human error—such as risky or careless actions or poor data handling—is a top driver of security incidents because threat actors routinely exploit people and workflows, not just perimeter defences. A practical approach is to observe behaviour, connect it to data exposure and threa...
Human error—such as risky or careless actions or poor data handling—is a top driver of security incidents because threat actors routinely exploit people and workflows, not just perimeter defences. A practical approach is to observe behaviour, connect it to data exposure and threat activity, and respond quickly with clear, enforceable controls.
The most effective human risk management programmes enable organisations to:
- Detect patterns that precede incidents: Correlated insights across threat activity, user behaviour and awareness signals reveal when specific actions increase exposure.
- Quantify user-level exposure: Risk scoring identifies individuals or groups most likely to drive incidents, helping prioritise interventions and mitigation efforts.
- Guide corrective action: Structured playbooks and recommendations provide clear next steps so teams can turn insights into action without guesswork.
- Trigger timely interventions: Automated behaviour-driven actions, such as targeted training, phishing simulations or user nudges, can be deployed when risky behaviour is detected to help reduce repeated exposure.
- Measure outcomes: Trend analysis and reporting demonstrate how interventions are improving behaviour and reducing organisational risk over time.
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How does Human Resilience Workbench calculate risk scores?
Human Resilience Workbench calculates risk scores by correlating behavioural, awareness and threat telemetry into organisation-, department- and user-level scores that are continuously tracked and updated over time. ...
Human Resilience Workbench calculates risk scores by correlating behavioural, awareness, and threat telemetry into organisation-, department- and user-level scores that are continuously tracked and updated over time.
How scoring works:
- Ingest signals from integrated systems: Data is pulled from awareness programmes such as ZenGuide, user behaviour and threat activity across the Proofpoint ecosystem to provide a comprehensive view of human risk.
- Correlate behavioural and threat signals:Signals are analysed together to reflect how user actions and real-world threat exposure contribute to overall risk.
- Compute scores and track trends: Risk scores are generated across organisational levels, with continuous updates and trend lines to show where risk is falling or rising over time.
- Provide contextual insights: Benchmarking and comparative views, where available, help organisations understand their risk posture vs peers and track progress more effectively.
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What does Human Resilience Workbench provide to help me prove value to stakeholders?
Human Resilience Workbench delivers clear metrics, visible trends and operational evidence that show how your human risk management programme is reducing risk over time. ...
Human Resilience Workbench delivers clear metrics, visible trends and operational evidence that show how your human risk management programme is reducing risk over time.
Report-ready metrics include:
- Quantified posture: Organisation-, department- and user-level scores with trend lines show whether exposure is rising or falling in real time.
- Benchmark context: Peer comparisons, where available, put results in an industry perspective and make progress easier to explain.
- Driver visibility: Breakdowns across threat, data and awareness reveal which behaviours and data interactions are moving the numbers, enabling targeted action.
- Action-to-outcome linkage: Guided mitigations and automated controls reduce manual effort and accelerate time to contain, delivering ROI in efficiency and risk reduction.
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How can my organisation evaluate our top drivers of human risk?
Human risk is shaped by how your users behave, what they can access, how they handle sensitive data and how they respond to real-world threats. Evaluating this risk effectively requires understanding the actions that increase exposure and how they intersect with business pr...
Human risk is shaped by how your users behave, what they can access, how they handle sensitive data and how they respond to real-world threats. Evaluating this risk effectively requires understanding the actions that increase exposure and how they intersect with business processes, sensitive assets and attacker interest.
The key factors to evaluate are:
- Behaviour patterns: Actions such as clicking suspicious links, reusing passwords or mishandling data often signal higher exposure and increased likelihood of human error.
- Access and permissions: Users with broad or privileged access can cause significant impact if they make mistakes or are compromised.
- Threat targeting: Attackers often focus on specific people or roles, making targeted users more susceptible to exploitation.
- Data interaction habits: How users create, move and share sensitive data can raise or lower your organisation's exposure.
- Strength of security culture: Low participation in awareness programmes or repeated risky behaviour tends to increase the likelihood of future incidents.