CISA Releases 'Deception by Design' Guide to Deploy Deception Technologies Against Cybercriminals

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is going old-school to help organizations with limited resources set traps for hackers. On September 22, 2026, CISA published the guide "Deception by Design," which focuses on deploying deception technologies as a defensive strategy. The advisory explains how organizations can use fake credentials, decoy documents, and misleading network services to detect, confuse, and attribute threat actors who gain access to their systems. CISA frames deception as a low-cost, high-impact strategy that can level the playing field for organizations that lack extensive security budgets. The guide details practical deployment considerations, including network segmentation, placement of decoys, and logging strategies to ensure traps are effective without disrupting legitimate operations. By leveraging deception, defenders can detect intrusions earlier, waste attacker time and resources, and gain intelligence on threat actor tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). The advisory does not patch any software vulnerabilities but instead provides a framework for improving detection and attribution through defensive deception.