It’s 3:17 AM in Tokyo.
The city is asleep.
I’m not.
Jet lag has me wandering quiet streets, watching the world work without me—and wondering how security works when no one’s looking.
Here’s what I’ve noticed: There are no fences. No guards. No shrieking alarms. Just signs. Just rules.
And somehow… it works.
I saw a simple chain across a storefront. Not a gate. A chain. No padlock. Just hanging there like a polite suggestion. And no one touched it. No one needed to.
Because here, people follow the rules.
I Tried Breaking One. It Didn’t Go Well.
The crosswalk light was red. No cars in sight. I stepped into the street.
Four steps in, I felt it. The eyes.
Dozens of them. Behind me. In front of me.
That look—like I’d just insulted someone’s grandmother.
By step six, I understood. I wasn’t just crossing early.
I was breaking the order. I was violating trust.
And everyone knew it.
I backed up. Slowly.
Tried to blend my 6’2” frame into the crowd of unimpressed pedestrians.
I’d committed the ultimate cultural sin: I didn’t follow the rules.
And I felt shame.
What If Security Worked Like That at Your Company?
What if skipping MFA got you the look?
What if clicking on a sketchy link meant you had to explain it to your team?
What if storing passwords in a spreadsheet triggered a silent pause in the breakroom?
We spend a fortune on tools. Firewalls. EDR. Fancy dashboards.
But you know what stops breaches? Culture.
The kind where people don’t just follow the rules because they’re told to—they follow them because everyone else does. Because stepping out of line doesn’t just break policy—it makes you feel like you’ve let the whole team down.
That’s where the risk drops. That’s when the barbed wire disappears—because people are watching each other’s backs instead of testing the fence.
So Here’s the Question…
What are you doing to build a culture of relentless rule-following at your company? Do your employees think security is just “IT’s job”? Are you counting on tools to cover gaps in behavior? Or are you building an environment where breaking security rules is met with silence—and shame?
Because when people follow the rules by default, security gets easier.
Incidents drop. Insurance premiums go down. Breaches don’t happen. But when no one cares?
You better believe you’ll need the 8-foot fence.
It’s Your Move.
This isn’t a tech issue. It’s leadership. You set the tone. You fund the program. You decide whether security is an afterthought—or part of the culture.
So, what are you going to do?
Because I’ve seen what happens when a culture demands rule-following. It works. It scales. It protects.
And it starts with you.
Let’s talk about building that culture—before you need more fences.
