International Happiness at Work Week × Cyber Security Awareness Month aka: “Mandatory Fun

International Happiness at Work Week × Cyber Security Awareness Month
aka: “Mandatory Fun meets Mandatory MFA"

Hook: If happiness is a warm laptop, mine’s currently at 92°C running the annual phishing module in 37 tabs while HR emails me a gratitude survey (from a no-reply address obviously).

Post: This week we’re asked to “bring our whole selves to work” and “never click anything, trust nothing, verify everything.”

So… smile with zero trust.
Zen, but with logging.

Things I learned celebrating both at once:
🎉 Confetti cannons banned: too much data exfiltration risk per square inch.
🍰 Free cupcakes labelled “FREE CUPCAKES—CLICK HERE” were quarantined by the secure email gateway. Morale dipped 37%.
🧘 Wellbeing hour = staring at the SIEM until the alerts look like a lava lamp. Therapeutic. Ish.
🔐 MFA now stands for Mandatory Fun Avoidance.
🧪 “Phishing Simulation” + “Be Kind Week” = telling your mates you love them… after reporting them to Security.
🚪 “Open Door Policy,” but also Zero Trust: door stays closed; please request access via a ticket, 3 approvals, and a retina scan.
🧠 “See it, say it, sort it” became “See it, sandbox it, SIEM it, still get paged at 2am.”
📈 New KPI: Incidents per Smile (IpS). We’re trending… enigmatic.

Serious bit (because someone will ask):
Happiness and security aren’t enemies.
Protect people from cognitive overload (fewer, smarter prompts, least-friction MFA).
Kill zombie tools. One clear playbook > five portals + vibes.
Reward safe behavior publicly; punish quietly and rarely.
Make the secure path the default, not the detour.

Call to action:
Celebrate safely: pet a dog, patch a system, block a domain, unblock a colleague.