IRM in the Real World: Why Culture Is Just as Important as Controls

But here’s the truth: you can’t fix insider risk with tooling alone. Because insider risk is driven by people, not malware. It’s driven by decisions, emotions, misunderstandings, and misaligned incentives. It’s driven by company culture.

This is the part of insider risk management (IRM) that doesn’t get enough attention. We can spend all day writing detection logic and configuring alerts, but if our culture rewards speed over security, tolerates shadow IT, and ignores employee frustrations, we’re building our program on shaky ground.

In this post, we’ll dig into what real-world IRM looks like in practice, and why building a culture of accountability, transparency, and trust is just as important as the technical controls you deploy.

Employees: the First and Last Line of Defense

Let’s start with the basics: insider risk is inherently a human problem. Even when tools catch a policy violation, like someone downloading a trove of sensitive files to a USB drive, it’s just surfacing the output of a human decision. Maybe the person was frustrated after a poor performance review. Maybe they didn’t understand the rules. Maybe they thought “everyone does it” when leaving for a new job.

Whatever the reason, the moment that behavior occurred, technology became reactive. The real work of IRM is preventing that moment from happening in the first place, or at least making it less likely.

That starts with culture.

If employees understand what’s expected, feel respected and supported, and trust that the company takes data protection seriously, they’re far less likely to take shortcuts or break rules. Culture can’t eliminate insider risk, but it can shrink the pool of potential incidents dramatically.

The High Cost of Fear-Based Programs

Let’s be honest: some IRM programs have earned a bad reputation. Overly aggressive surveillance, unclear policy enforcement, inconsistent investigations; these approaches create fear, not safety. They make employees feel watched, not trusted. And that fear has consequences.

People stop reporting incidents. They avoid asking questions. They look for workarounds to avoid triggering alerts. The culture becomes one of silence and evasion. Ironically, this leads to more insider risk, not less.

IRM done right doesn’t rely on fear. It relies on clarity and consistency. Employees know what the boundaries are. They know what behaviors raise red flags. And they know that investigations are handled fairly, with proper process and discretion.

A healthy culture doesn’t mean no enforcement. It means enforcement that’s predictable, professional, and grounded in shared values. When people understand the “why” behind the rules, they’re far more likely to follow them.

Training That Goes Beyond Checkboxes

Security training is usually treated as a compliance requirement. Just a box to check once a year. The problem is, generic training doesn’t address the nuances of insider risk. Training needs to be personalized to the vertical, department, or the employee themselves. It should occur more than once per year to ensure the message is effectively communicated.

Telling employees to “be careful with sensitive data” is meaningless if they don’t know what qualifies as sensitive, how to recognize risky behavior in colleagues, or when to escalate something to security or HR.

Real-world IRM requires role-based, scenario-driven training. Engineers should understand the rules around source code access and offboarding. Finance teams should know the risks of sharing forecasts and pricing models outside the org. Contractors need to be trained on short-term access hygiene and non-disclosure expectations.

And most importantly, everyone should understand how to report concerns without fear of retaliation. That’s not a technical control. That’s a cultural commitment.

Employees need to be trained on how to work collaboratively to avoid these types of mistakes. The culture has to be one that is accepting from the top down. 

Transparency Builds Trust (and Trust Builds Security)

One of the biggest mistakes companies make when launching an IRM program is treating it like a secret.

Yes, insider threat programs often handle sensitive investigations. Yes, there are privacy and legal considerations. But that doesn’t mean you should be vague about what the program does, how it works, or why it exists.

Transparency builds trust. And trust makes controls more effective.

When employees understand that the organization monitors certain behaviors not to spy, but to protect, they’re more likely to cooperate. When they see that policy violations are handled fairly and consistently, they’re more likely to respect the rules. When they know the IRM team includes HR and legal and operates with due process, they’re less likely to assume the worst.

Your insider risk program should be visible, human, and honest. Not hidden behind closed doors and jargon.

These situations should be brought forward during all hands call to make everyone aware of the program and what they can do to help.

Culture Needs Champions, Not Just Controls

Every successful IRM program we’ve seen in the real world has at least one thing in common: executive support. Not just a security leader who cares about the issue, but a leadership team that reinforces the importance of protecting company data, respecting policy, and holding everyone accountable.

This cultural reinforcement matters. When a CEO talks about data loss as a business risk, not just an IT issue, employees pay attention. When managers set the tone that “security is part of how we work,” teams follow. When HR and legal treat investigations with care and professionalism, employees feel respected.

Culture change doesn’t happen in Slack threads and policy PDFs. It happens through modeling, repetition, and reinforcement. And it requires leaders to lead. If you think culture is a “soft” part of IRM, think again. Culture is what determines whether your controls work. It’s what turns your policies into practice. It’s what keeps your people from becoming your greatest vulnerability.

And most importantly, it’s what gives your organization the resilience to respond to insider incidents without tearing itself apart.

So if you’re launching or scaling an IRM program, don’t just focus on tooling and detection. Invest in culture. Build it. Model it. Reinforce it. Because culture is the only control that scales with your organization and works when the tools fail.

The executive team needs to be available to jump in and assist when there are misunderstandings of the program and course correct immediately. 

Real-World IRM Is Messy — And That’s Okay

In theory, insider risk programs follow clean workflows: alert, triage, investigation, resolution. In the real world, they’re messy.

Maybe the employee being investigated is also a top performer. Maybe the behavior is technically risky but contextually justified. Maybe the legal path forward is unclear. Maybe HR and security disagree on the severity.

That’s real life. And that’s why IRM can’t live in a silo. You need cross-functional collaboration. You need mature escalation paths. And you need a culture that tolerates ambiguity while still striving for accountability.

When things get messy, culture is what guides you. It’s what ensures people handle investigations with empathy. It’s what keeps decisions grounded in principle. And it’s what helps the business move forward without creating division or distrust.

Want the Complete Insider Risk Playbook?

Our ebook, Insider Risk Management: A Practical Guide for Proactive Data Security, dives deep into how to balance technical controls with cultural strategy. From program design and investigation workflows to cross-functional governance and employee training, this guide gives you the frameworks and real-world insights to build a program that works in practice — not just on paper.

Download the full ebook now and learn how to turn IRM into a strategic advantage for your business.

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