NCSC Cyber Culture FAQ: 21 Questions Answered

Huzzah! NCSC has put cyber security culture firmly on the map. Boards are asking about it, CISOs are being measured on it, and security awareness teams are suddenly being pulled into conversations about behavior, risk, and leadership.

But what does “NCSC cyber culture” actually mean in practice? How does it link to what you do today? And where do you even start?

This FAQ pulls together 21 of the most common questions we hear from CISOs, security awareness leads, HR partners, and senior leaders who want to do more than just point at a PDF and hope for the best.

Use it as:

• a primer for yourself and your team,

• a handout for stakeholders,

• or a reference doc you can link to.

1. What does NCSC mean by “cyber security culture”?

NCSC talks about cyber security culture as the shared understanding of what is normal and valued when it comes to security in your organization. It’s not just what’s written in policy; it’s how people actually think, feel, and behave—especially under pressure.

In practice, that means:

• how people respond to suspicious activity,

• what they do when security and speed conflict,

• whether they feel safe reporting mistakes,

• and how leaders behave when nobody is watching.

Culture is the environment your controls live in. If that environment is friendly to secure behavior, your controls work. If it isn’t, people quietly route around them.

2. Why is NCSC focusing so much on culture now?

Because most major incidents have a human and cultural story, not just a technical one.

You can have strong technical controls on paper and still fail if:

• people are afraid to report early,

• workarounds are normalized,

• policies are unusable in real workflows,

• or leaders say one thing and do another.

NCSC’s culture push is a recognition that humans and organizations are part of the attack surface. If you ignore that, you’re only securing half the system.

3. Does NCSC cyber culture guidance only matter in the UK?

No. It’s written from a UK perspective, but the direction of travel is global.

NCSC’s culture principles line up with:

• NIST’s focus on human-centered security,

• CISA’s push for a “culture of cyber readiness”,

• and wider regulatory and insurance expectations around behavior, leadership, and governance.

Even if you never mention NCSC by name in a board pack, the ideas—security as an enabler, trust and openness, leadership ownership, usable guidance—are exactly what regulators and stakeholders everywhere are starting to expect.

4. What are the NCSC cyber culture principles in plain language?

Different NCSC documents phrase things slightly differently, but at a high level, they’re pointing to six big ideas:

1. Security as an enabler – security should help the organization achieve its goals, not just say “no.”

2. Safety, trust, and openness – people feel safe reporting problems and near misses early.

3. Learning and adaptation – the organization learns from incidents and change, and updates practices accordingly.

4. Social norms that support security – “how we do things here” quietly nudges people toward secure behavior.

5. Leadership ownership and example – leaders understand their impact and model the behavior they expect.

6. Clear, usable guidance and processes – people know what to do, and the secure way is realistic in daily work.

You can think of them as a checklist for the conditions that make secure behavior the natural choice.

5. How is this different from “security awareness”?

Traditional “awareness” has often meant:

• sending training courses,

• running phishing simulations,

• doing a campaign in October.

Culture asks a deeper question:

“What do people actually do in real situations—and why?”

Awareness is part of culture, but it’s only one lever.
Culture includes:

• how processes are designed,

• how leaders act,

• what gets rewarded or punished,

• and how safe it feels to speak up.

NCSC’s point is: you won’t train your way out of a bad culture.

6. Where should we start if we’ve never used NCSC culture guidance before?

Start simple:

1. Pick one or two principles that clearly matter for you right now—often trust and openness, usable guidance, or leadership.

2. Run a light baseline to understand where you stand (short survey + a few interviews + incident/metric review).

3. Choose one or two specific behaviors to focus on, not “culture” in general.

4. Design a small set of interventions and run them as an experiment, not a massive program.

You don’t need to “implement all the principles” on day one. You just need to start treating culture as something you can observe, influence, and measure.

7. How do we measure NCSC-aligned cyber security culture?

Think in three layers:

• Perception & climate – what people believe and how they feel (pulse surveys, interviews).

• Behavior – what they actually do (incident reporting, near misses, phish reporting, everyday secure behavior).

• Operations & structure – how the system is set up (security in projects, process friction, leadership engagement).

Then map those indicators to the NCSC principles.

For example, if you’re looking at “trust and openness,” you might track:

• whether people say they feel safe reporting mistakes,

• how many near misses are self-reported,

• and how quickly incident learnings show up in updated guidance.

The goal isn’t a perfect score—it’s a repeatable way to see where culture is helping or hurting.

8. What’s the difference between “good culture” and “good people”?

Good people can’t overcome a bad system.

A “good culture” isn’t about:

• hiring only perfect humans,

• or hoping that “more training” will make everyone behave ideally.

It’s about designing social, process, and leadership conditions so that:

• the secure choice is usually the easiest or most obvious choice,

• people feel safe escalating issues,

• and shortcuts that create risk are not quietly rewarded.

NCSC’s position is that people are part of the solution—but they can only act as a solution inside a system that supports them.

9. How does board and executive leadership fit into NCSC cyber culture?

Leadership is not a “nice to have” in culture—it’s a force multiplier.

From an NCSC perspective, boards and execs should:

• treat cyber as a business risk, not just an IT problem,

• ask informed questions about culture, human risk, and behavior,

• send consistent signals that early reporting and secure behavior matter,

• and make sure incentives and trade-offs (speed vs safety) are aligned with what they say.

If leaders publicly champion security and privately ignore it, the culture will follow what they do, not what they say.

10. How do we talk about NCSC cyber culture with the board?

Keep it simple and tied to risk.

For example:

“When we talk about NCSC cyber culture, we’re talking about how people actually behave under pressure, and whether our system makes secure behavior easy, normal, and safe. That affects the likelihood and impact of incidents just as much as our technical controls.”

Then show them:

• a small set of NCSC-aligned metrics,

• a principle-by-principle view of strengths and weaknesses,

• and a 12-month roadmap of culture and human risk work.

You don’t need them to memorize the principles. You need them to see culture as something you are running, measuring, and improving, not hoping for.

11. What’s the role of security awareness teams in NCSC culture?

Security awareness teams sit right at the crossroads.

In an NCSC-aligned world, they:

• move from being course and campaign owners to human risk operators,

• help identify high-risk behaviors and audiences,

• design interventions that work with HumanOS and real workflows,

• and contribute data to the culture and human risk scorecard.

They become the people who can say:

“Here’s what we’re seeing in behavior and perception, here’s where it maps to NCSC principles, and here’s what we’re doing about it.”

12. How does this link to HR and People teams?

HR is essential if you want culture change to stick.

NCSC-style cyber culture intersects directly with:

• onboarding and exit processes,

• leadership development and manager training,

• performance frameworks and values,

• wellbeing, workload, and change programs.

Your best move is to partner with HR to:

• bring cyber culture into leadership expectations,

• embed security behaviors into values and competency frameworks,

• and ensure people processes reinforce, not undermine, secure behavior.

13. Can we align NCSC culture work with NIST, CISA, or other frameworks?

Yes, and you should.

At a high level:

• NCSC culture principles ↔ NIST’s human-centered security themes

• NCSC “positive culture” ↔ CISA’s “culture of cyber readiness”

• NCSC governance guidance ↔ board and executive expectations in other regulations

You don’t need a complex mapping matrix. You need a clear story like:

“Our culture work is aligned with NCSC’s principles and supports our obligations under NIST/CISA/other frameworks by addressing the human element and behavior under pressure.”

That gives you a single culture narrative that travels globally.

14. What are some warning signs that our cyber culture is in trouble?

A few red flags we see over and over:

• People hide mistakes or only report incidents when there’s no other choice.

• Workarounds are normal and often celebrated as “getting things done.”

• Security is seen as a blocker, not a partner.

• Leaders quietly bypass controls in the name of speed.

• Training metrics look “green,” but incident patterns aren’t improving.

• Policies and processes are long, confusing, and routinely ignored.

Any one of these is a signal. Several together are a story: your culture is quietly increasing your risk.

15. How do we build a 12-month NCSC cyber culture roadmap?

Think like an operator, not a campaign designer.

A simple structure looks like:

• Q1 – Discover & focus
  Baseline culture and human risk, pick 1–2 NCSC principles to prioritize, stand up a cross-functional group.

• Q2 – Quick wins & system fixes
  Deliver visible changes (communications, training, tools) and fix a small number of high-friction processes.

• Q3 – Deep integration
  Embed culture into projects, HR, and governance; refine metrics and scorecards.

• Q4 – Prove & plan
  Show impact with NCSC-aligned metrics and stories, run a retrospective, set focus for next year.

Treat it as an annual cycle, not a one-time project.

16. How do we include NCSC culture in our metrics and KPIs?

Resist the urge to create dozens of new metrics. Instead:

1. Pick 5–10 indicators across perception, behavior, and operations.

2. Map each one to an NCSC principle.

3. Track them quarterly and show trend, not just snapshots.

For example:

• % of staff who feel safe admitting a cyber mistake (Trust & Openness)

• Near misses self-reported per 100 staff (Trust & Openness, Learning)

• Time to complete a common secure process (Usable Guidance)

• % of high-impact projects with early security engagement (Security as Enabler)

• Number of leadership forums where culture and human risk are discussed (Leadership)

Your aim is to show movement and correlation with real incidents, not to build the perfect dashboard.

17. What about GenAI—how does NCSC culture thinking apply there?

GenAI is a perfect test of your culture.

If your culture currently tolerates:

• workarounds,

• silence about mistakes,

• leaders bypassing rules,

then GenAI will amplify those patterns: quiet data leakage in prompts, shadow AI tools, over-trust in AI outputs.

NCSC culture principles give you the lens to ask:

• Are we treating AI as an enabler with guardrails, or pretending it doesn’t exist?

• Do people feel safe reporting AI mistakes and near misses?

• Are we updating guidance and controls quickly as we learn?

• Are leaders modeling responsible, transparent AI use?

AI risk is not just a technical problem. It’s a culture and behavior problem, exactly in NCSC’s line of sight.

18. How do we bring middle managers into NCSC culture work?

Middle managers are often the decisive layer for culture.

To bring them in:

• Give them clear, simple expectations linked to NCSC ideas (e.g., “create a safe environment for reporting,” “reinforce secure ways of working, not shortcuts”).

• Provide ready-to-use stories, talking points, and micro-content they can drop into team meetings.

• Equip them with practical scripts for handling reports, trade-offs, and pushback.

• Show them how culture metrics apply to their area, not just the whole organization.

If execs say one thing and middle managers experience another, staff will always follow the middle.

19. Is NCSC cyber culture only relevant for large organizations?

No. The principles scale down just fine.

Smaller organizations have:

• fewer layers of bureaucracy,

• more direct access between staff and leaders,

• and the ability to shift norms quickly.

You may not run full baselines or fancy scorecards, but you can still:

• set clear expectations about behavior,

• make reporting psychologically safe,

• hold leaders accountable for their example,

• and design simple, usable guidance for real work.

In fact, smaller orgs can often move faster on culture than large enterprises.

20. How can we avoid turning NCSC culture work into a box-ticking exercise?

Focus on real decisions and behaviors, not just documentation.

Ask:

• “What would we want people to actually do in this scenario?”

• “What would a healthy culture look like here?”

• “How do we know if that’s happening?”

Design measures and interventions around those questions.

If an initiative doesn’t change how:

• someone makes a decision,

• a leader responds,

• a process flows,

then it’s probably theater.

NCSC culture guidance is about reality, not reports.

21. How can Cybermaniacs help with NCSC cyber culture?

Most organizations don’t need more theory; they need translation, prioritization, and execution.

We usually support clients by:

• Running an NCSC-aligned culture and human risk baseline that looks at HumanOS™, your cyber safety & digital risk culture, and your organizational dynamics.

• Turning that into a simple set of themes, metrics, and NCSC-mapped risks leaders can understand.

• Co-creating a 12-month culture roadmap and scorecard that fits your capacity.

• Providing the creative engine—stories, characters, experiences, and micro-learning—that makes culture tangible and memorable.

• Helping CISOs and awareness leads tell a clear story to boards, regulators, and staff about where culture is today and where it’s going.

In other words, we help you move from “we know culture matters” to “we run an NCSC-aligned cyber culture system that we can see, steer, and show.”