People Over Policies, Pt. 6 — Awareness Over Automation

We can automate alerts.
We can automate responses.
But we can’t automate accountability.

Every tool we add—AI, SOAR, EDR—makes us faster, smarter, more efficient.
But if awareness drops, if curiosity fades, if people stop asking why… we’re not getting more secure.
We’re just getting more complacent, faster.

Automation should amplify awareness, not replace it.
I’ve seen environments with all the bells and whistles—threat intel feeds, AI triage, auto-remediation—but the team stopped looking at the logs.
They trusted the tools more than their instincts.
That’s when blind spots grow.

Awareness isn’t about paranoia.
It’s about presence.
It’s the engineer who double-checks what the system says is “clean.”
The analyst who asks, “What if this is a false negative?”
The leader who reminds the team, “We own the risk, not the tool.”

Automation is an accelerant.
But awareness is the spark.

One without the other isn’t security—it’s dependency.

👉 How do you keep awareness alive in an automated world?