Security incidents are routinely attributed to human error. This framing is both accurate and useless. Here's a better way to think about security failures.
The Human Error Fallacy
When a security incident is traced to a user clicking a phishing link, the natural response is to attribute the failure to human error. This is technically accurate but strategically useless, because it locates the problem in the individual rather than in the systems that made the error easy to make and hard to catch.
Designing Out Errors
The most effective security improvements make the secure path the easy path: secrets management systems that eliminate the need for developers to handle credentials manually, automated configuration management that reduces misconfiguration surface area, and email security infrastructure that makes phishing links visually distinguishable.