Author: Jay Prajapati 

Cyber threats keep evolving, but one thing stays the same: people play a vital role in protecting organisations from attack. That's why the Human Firewall series, delivered through our Effective Information Sharing & Security (EISS) programme, focused on building cyber resilience through awareness, collaboration and practical learning.

The series came to an end on 28 October 2026. Over five sessions this year, colleagues from across our member organisations looked at cyber-attacks the way an attacker sees them, and the part people play in stopping them.

We delivered the series in partnership with Halo and the Northern WARP. Strengthening cyber security and resilience is one of the EISS programme's core priorities and we know technology alone can't deliver it. Many incidents begin with a person: an email that looks genuine, a call that seems routine, or access that nobody has checked in a while. Human Firewall was designed to help people spot those moments and respond with confidence.

 

Five Sessions, One Attack
The series followed the stages of a real attack, from the first piece of research to a full-scale incident. Each session stood on its own, so members could join whichever ones were most relevant to their role.

Session	When	What it covered
1. Reconnaissance	February	How attackers gather information and plan access long before an attack is visible
2. Initial Access	April	The techniques used to trick people into running malicious content and giving attackers a foothold
3. Gathering Data	July	How attackers, and AI tools, find and misuse excessive data access, and how deception techniques like honeypots catch intruders early
4. Exploitation	October	How attackers manipulate trust between staff, managers and executives
5. WarGame	October	An interactive, scenario-based exercise that brought the whole series together

 

Bringing It All Together: The WarGame
The final WarGame session brought together everything covered throughout the series. Participants stepped into the roles of executives, communications leads, operational staff and IT teams within a fictional organisation, responding to a cyber incident in real time.

As new developments emerged, teams had to make decisions, manage communications and coordinate their response under pressure. While IT worked out what had happened, communications teams responded to concerned customers and leaders made decisions with only part of the picture. It showed clearly that a cyber-attack affects the whole organisation, not just IT.

 

What We Learned Together
A few themes came up repeatedly across the five sessions:

• Security is everyone's job. Attackers go after people as often as systems, so awareness must reach beyond the IT team, to every role and every level.
• Think like an attacker. Seeing how an attack is planned, step by step, makes the warning signs much easier to spot in day-to-day work.
• Trust can be exploited. Relationships between colleagues, managers and executives can be used against an organisation, so it's important to have clear ways to check requests that seem unusual.
• Practice builds confidence. Rehearsing a crisis in a safe space makes the real thing far less unfamiliar and shows up gaps in plans before they matter.
• Sharing makes us stronger. Bringing colleagues from different organisations together meant people learned from each other's experience as well as from the experts.

 

What’s Next
A huge thank you to our partners at Halo for designing and delivering such engaging sessions, especially the final WarGame, which was built from scratch for the series. Thanks also to the Northern WARP for their support and to every member who joined us, took part and shared their experience.

As cyber threats continue to evolve, building resilience remains a shared challenge. Through the EISS programme, we are committed to helping members strengthen their knowledge, preparedness and response capabilities through practical, collaborative learning. We look forward to continuing that work in 2027.
 

To find out more or get involved, visit the EISS programme page or contact the iNetwork team at: iNetwork@Tameside.gov.uk