A planned effort to change user behaviour through repeated security messaging, examples, and reminders. In practice, the campaign only works when it drives a specific action such as MFA adoption, phishing resistance, or stronger password habits, rather than trying to teach every security topic at once.
Expanded Definition
A security awareness campaign is a coordinated behaviour-change effort that uses repeated messages, examples, and prompts to shift how people act around security. In the NHI and IAM context, the term matters most when the campaign is tied to a measurable action such as MFA enrolment, phishing reporting, secret handling, or approval hygiene, not generic “security education.”
Definitions vary across vendors and organisations, but a useful standard is to treat a campaign as an operational programme rather than a training event. That means it should have a target audience, a defined behaviour, a cadence, a feedback loop, and a success metric. This approach aligns with the NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0, which frames awareness as part of broader governance and risk outcomes, not as a checkbox.
In practice, the campaign often overlaps with phishing simulations, policy reminders, and role-based coaching, but it becomes effective only when it reduces a specific exposure. The most common misapplication is treating a security awareness campaign as a one-time training rollout, which occurs when organisations count attendance instead of measuring behaviour change.
Examples and Use Cases
Implementing a security awareness campaign rigorously often introduces message fatigue, requiring organisations to weigh sustained behaviour change against the cost of repeated communications and measurement.
- A finance team receives a monthly campaign focused on approving payment requests only after secondary verification, reinforcing anti-fraud habits that also protect privileged workflows.
- An engineering organisation runs a campaign on secret hygiene after reviewing findings from The State of Secrets in AppSec, using short reminders, code examples, and developer feedback to reduce token leakage.
- A security team uses a campaign to push MFA adoption before new cloud access is granted, linking the message to account takeover risk and support escalation paths.
- Analysts share a case study from the DeepSeek breach to show how exposed secrets and poor handling practices can become large-scale operational incidents.
- A help desk campaign trains staff to recognise social engineering attempts that ask for password resets, device enrolment, or approval bypasses through urgent language.
These examples work best when the message is specific, the action is immediate, and the organisation can observe whether behaviour actually changed. Generic “be careful” messaging rarely survives contact with real attacker pressure. For background on the security outcomes such campaigns should support, see the NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0.
Why It Matters in NHI Security
Security awareness campaigns matter in NHI security because many identity failures begin with human behaviour around credentials, approvals, and trust decisions. A user who reuses a password, approves an unexpected MFA prompt, or commits a secret can expose service access paths that automation then amplifies. NHIMG research shows why speed matters: when AWS credentials are exposed publicly, attackers attempt access within an average of 17 minutes and sometimes within 9 minutes, as documented in LLMjacking: How Attackers Hijack AI Using Compromised NHIs.
This is why awareness must be tied to NHI control points, especially secret handling, phishing resistance, and privileged action verification. The State of Secrets in AppSec report also shows that only 44% of developers follow secrets management best practices, which means messaging alone is not enough unless it changes daily workflows. In parallel, the NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 reinforces that awareness should support protective outcomes, not just knowledge transfer.
Organisations typically encounter the value of a security awareness campaign only after a credential leak, phishing compromise, or suspicious approval has already triggered incident response, at which point behaviour change becomes operationally unavoidable to address.
Standards & Framework Alignment
This section maps relevant standards and security frameworks to the operational risks and controls described in this guidance.
OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 address the attack and risk surface, while NIST CSF 2.0 and NIST AI RMF set the governance and control requirements practitioners need to meet.
| Framework | Control / Reference | Relevance |
|---|---|---|
| NIST CSF 2.0 | GV.AT | Awareness and training underpin governance outcomes and user risk reduction. |
| OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 | NHI-02 | Campaigns often target secret handling failures that lead to NHI compromise. |
| NIST AI RMF | AI governance guidance stresses human oversight, communication, and risk awareness. |
Design campaigns that improve operator judgment around AI-enabled workflows and misuse signals.
Related resources from NHI Mgmt Group
Deepen Your Knowledge
Reviewed and updated by the NHIMG editorial team on June 12, 2026.
NHI Mgmt Group — the #1 independent authority on Non-Human Identity, IAM, and Agentic AI security. nhimg.org
