Traditional information security should, it has been argued, be like Victorian children; best kept out of sight. Most CISOs aim for security that is invisible to the end user, working away in the background but not impinging on the day or hampering business objectives. While there is a great deal of merit in avoiding security controls that deter productivity, for me, this doesn’t mean that security should be made invisible.
When I was 7, like most of my friends, I began to receive pocket money. Of course, now that I have my own children I can see that entrusting money to a 7-year-old is just a marginally more interesting way of disposing of cash than burning it. And yet parents (me included) continue to hand hard-earned money to their offspring, with the sure expectation that, at best, it will ultimately fill their house with useless plastic
When we block and hide every one of the (thousands) of threats a business is subjected to daily and weekly, we not only project a false sense of safety to the employees (“I don’t think our business has ever been the target of a cyber attack, so it probably isn’t an issue for us”) but, overtime, we also cultivate a workforce who have no ability to identify risk (and therefore no understanding of the need to regulate their own behaviours to minimise risk).
When we hand over a few shiny coins to our children (or, nowadays, give them a kids’ payment card) we begin to create an awareness of money management skills. We create opportunities for them to mess up, within a safe environment.