The technology industry has been “fighting the wrong battle with the wrong weapons” against cybercrime for the past two decades; that’s according to a white paper by cybersecurity veteran Chris Pogue, published by Nuix. The paper contends that for technology to fight cybercrime and insider threats effectively, it must solve human vulnerabilities. Pogue is Nuix’s Senior Vice President, Cyber Threat Analysis
He said: “In the more than 2500 data breaches I have investigated, I can count exactly zero that were caused by non-human-initiated system failure—like it or not, people are the problem.”
The white paper examines five cognitive biases — “bugs in our brain software” — that cause people to make poor decisions. It examines how other industries have learned to deal with these biases by concentrating on changing human behavior, and applies these lessons to the fight against cybercrime.
He said: “Our focus with Nuix Insight technology is to reduce the number of human decision points, thereby dramatically reducing the opportunity for mistakes and failure. To do this we’ve baked into the products decades of experience from experts in incident response, malware reverse engineering, threat intelligence, data analysis, insider threats, and digital forensics.”
The white paper includes a ‘strategic battle plan’ and practical action for organisations to focus on using technology, people, and processes to address the people problems of cybersecurity. Pogue said: “Do we have what it takes to outsmart our own brains and stop ourselves from repeating the mistakes of the past? Hopefully we can set ourselves up for the next 20 years, get serious about security, address the real human vulnerability, and start reclaiming surrendered ground.” Visit www.nuix.com.
