What are adversary personas and why do we use them? Context makes security complicated. Continent, country, region, state, locality, political union, political party, opposition or in-power, served audience, community, religion, demographics, labor, environment, elections, media, social media may direct how you control for risk. This is also true for adversaries, their capabilities, and motivations. Personas help describe the who (description), why (motivation/goals), and what (resources/capabilities) for an adversary of an organization. By borrowing some tools from product and user experience design, we can construct adversary personas to help us challenge common assumptions and fallacies about attackers while imagining other creative yet realistic possibilities.