Getting Permission To Use HaveIBeenPwned From Your Legal Dept
Engaging end users using marketing, psychology and safety theory.
About Geordie Stewart
His award winning masters thesis at the Royal Holloway Information Security Group examined information security awareness from a fresh perspective as a marketing and communications challenge. In his regular speaking appearances at international information security conferences such as RSA, ISACA and ISSA he challenges conventional thinking on risk culture and communication.
In addition to senior security management roles in large UK organisations Geordie writes the security awareness column for the ISSA international journal.
Awareness Blog
ISSA Security Awareness Column March 2013 – Lowering Security Awareness
We spend a lot of time talking about how to raise security awareness. We fill entire books, columns and conferences with it. However, anything that can go up must also go down. How about we turn the phrase on its head and ask what lowers security awareness? Just as there are behaviours that raise security awareness there are also some that lower security awareness. But what can we do about it? Name and shame was an important step in getting software vendors to deal with security vulnerabilities in their products. We should be equally critical when human vulnerabilities are created through the promotion of unsafe attitudes and behaviours. In this column I’m going to name and shame particularly egregious examples which I think reduces security awareness.
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ISSA Security Awareness Column September 2012 – Cargo Cult Security
During the course of World War Two in the Pacific there were numerous primitive cultures on remote islands that came into contact with Westerners for the first time. Islanders were particularly impressed with the cargo that the visitors brought with them. At the conclusion of World War Two most of the visitors left and the cargo stopped arriving. Across multiple islands separated by thousands of miles a strange phenomenon occurred. Primitive cultures attempted to invite new cargo by imitating the conditions of what was happening when the cargo was arriving. They cleared spaces for aircraft landing strips and “controllers” dressed up with vines for wires and sticks for microphones. Bizarre ritualised behaviour developed around the use of artefacts like uniforms and insignias. “Cargo Cult” behaviour was a phrase coined by the scientist Richard Feynman to explain activity that occurs where appearances are superficially imitated. A result is pursued without actually understanding the underlying mechanisms of cause and effect. Pre-requisites are mistaken for causation. The pattern across so many independent island cultures suggests that this confusion is part of human nature. A good causation parody you may have heard of is a lack of pirates causes global warming.
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