Speaker 1: Welcome to the deep dive. We're here to cut through
Speaker 1: the noise, dig into your sources, and get you the
Speaker 1: key insights fast. You know, when you picture cybersecurity, what
Speaker 1: usually comes up. It's that classic image, right, the hacker
Speaker 1: hoody up, dark room screens blinking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that intense image of someone furiously typing code. And
Speaker 2: that picture suggests security is this really technical, almost hidden
Speaker 2: thing that only a few experts get exactly. But that
Speaker 2: core idea that it's all about technology, well, that's kind
Speaker 2: of led us down a tricky path. We keep trying
Speaker 2: to patch software when maybe the real issue is somewhere
Speaker 2: else entirely right.
Speaker 1: Because the source material we're diving into today argues pretty
Speaker 1: strongly that most security problems they're not tech problems at
Speaker 1: their heart, they're.
Speaker 3: Human problems, ave for you. And yeah, so our.
Speaker 1: Mission here is to really get that shift in thinking
Speaker 1: security is a behavior, it's not just a skill you learn,
Speaker 1: like tying your shoes. And we'll do that by looking
Speaker 1: at the first three sort of foundational habits you need.
Speaker 2: And to really frame why this human angle is so crucial.
Speaker 2: Let's jump back in time, way back like six hundred years. Okay,
Speaker 2: think about Johann Gutenberg.
Speaker 1: Gutenberg printing press guy right, mid fourteen hundreds.
Speaker 4: That's the one.
Speaker 2: So he gets his funding, you know, from a venture
Speaker 2: capitalist back then he perfects his invention, ready to go.
Speaker 2: Then just two years later, boom, he's being sued by
Speaker 2: his own backer.
Speaker 3: Sued why what happened?
Speaker 2: An insider threat, his most trusted employee a getting Peter.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, so Peter was what leaking info.
Speaker 2: Totally feeding financial details, trade secrets, everything back to the VC.
Speaker 2: And then supposedly he even destroyed key partnership documents, sabotage man.
Speaker 2: So Gutenberg ended up broke, died penniless, his world changing
Speaker 2: invention basically snatched away in a hostile takeover, all because
Speaker 2: of betrayed trust.
Speaker 3: That's incredible, and.
Speaker 2: The lesson there is just so stark, isn't it. The
Speaker 2: security problems we wrestle with now, insider threats, stealing secrets,
Speaker 2: they're the same human problems from six centuries ago.
Speaker 1: Detect changes, the vulnerability stays the same. It's about people.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: So that brings us nicely into part one, this core
Speaker 1: shift in thinking. If security is about people, what about
Speaker 1: that classic model, you know, the three pillars? People process technology.
Speaker 4: Right, that's what security pros often talk about.
Speaker 1: But wait, if people write the processes and people build
Speaker 1: and use the technology, then isn't it all people?
Speaker 4: Really?
Speaker 1: The Source seems to argue they're maybe the only link
Speaker 1: that matters.
Speaker 2: Well, the stats certainly lean that way. It's something like,
Speaker 2: what ninety five percent of all incidents traced back to
Speaker 2: a human element.
Speaker 1: It's staggering ninety five percent.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: And yeah, traditional thinking sometimes dismisses people as the weakest link.
Speaker 2: But if you look at it through this behavioral lens,
Speaker 2: maybe they're the only link we can actually truly.
Speaker 1: Improve, which explains why so much awareness training kind of
Speaker 1: falls flat. It treats security like a skill, like learning
Speaker 1: a Gulf swing. You can read all the tips, keep
Speaker 1: your head down, follow through, but just knowing it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean you can do it under pressure.
Speaker 4: That's a great analogy. The source had one too, about
Speaker 4: a manager.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the filing cabinet one exactly.
Speaker 2: You ask them about security, says oh yeah, physical files
Speaker 2: always locked, right, But then you look and the key
Speaker 2: is just dangling there in the lock.
Speaker 1: He knows the skill lock the cabinet, but the actual
Speaker 1: behavior taking the key out, making it routine that's missing.
Speaker 2: So the answer has to be habit. We need less
Speaker 2: code debugging maybe, and more insights from neuroscientists psychologists.
Speaker 1: Because security is a behavior. It's not just something you know.
Speaker 1: It's something you do consistently.
Speaker 2: And you can't just force behavior change overnight. Mark Twain
Speaker 2: had that great line, right, Yeah, you can't just toss
Speaker 2: habits out the window.
Speaker 1: You have to coax them down the stairs, one step
Speaker 1: at a time exactly.
Speaker 2: So getting better security means using these frameworks for changing behavior,
Speaker 2: like these nine cybersecurity habits we're starting to unpack.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's get into habit one. Literacy, building that foundation
Speaker 1: of knowledge. I remember earlier in my career, we were
Speaker 1: always playing whack a mole. You know, ransomware pops up,
Speaker 1: Quick train everyone on ransomware.
Speaker 4: Right, then fishing gets bad.
Speaker 1: So focus on phishing emails. We were just constantly giving
Speaker 1: people fish, not teaching them how to fish.
Speaker 2: And that's where making it practical comes in. The Girl
Speaker 2: Scouts approach is brilliant here.
Speaker 3: Oh the merit badges, Yeah, tell us about that.
Speaker 2: They use agile methods, basically breaking down really complex stuff
Speaker 2: into tiny, doable relevant pieces.
Speaker 1: Like teaching kindergartener's binary code.
Speaker 3: How do you even do that?
Speaker 2: Instead of ones and zeros, which is abstract, they use
Speaker 2: blue and yellow beads on a bracelet. Suddenly it's tangible.
Speaker 2: They get it.
Speaker 3: That's clever.
Speaker 2: And for slightly older kids, brownies, they teach networking by
Speaker 2: passing a ball of yarn around a circle.
Speaker 3: Ah.
Speaker 1: So it shows the connections visually exactly.
Speaker 2: And it shows how easily something malicious like malware could
Speaker 2: travel along those connections. Simple, practical, relevant.
Speaker 1: So literacy isn't just facts. It's two things. First, know thyself,
Speaker 1: what are your critical assets, your crown jewels?
Speaker 4: Right, what do you actually need to protect?
Speaker 1: And second, know thy enemy and for that you need
Speaker 1: a framework like the cyber kill chain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, those seven steps attackers often follow reconnaissance, weaponization, delivery.
Speaker 1: You don't need to memorize every single step.
Speaker 2: Name, No, not at all. The key is understanding. They
Speaker 2: have a process, a map.
Speaker 1: They need to follow, and if you know their map.
Speaker 2: You just need to break the chain at one point,
Speaker 2: block the reconnaissance maybe or stop the delivery. One break
Speaker 2: and the attack.
Speaker 1: Fails, you win, which brings up a really interesting point
Speaker 1: in cybersecurity.
Speaker 3: Things change.
Speaker 1: So fast attacks of all of daily So how useful
Speaker 1: is memorizing facts?
Speaker 3: Really?
Speaker 2: Not very in the long run, it's about tactical literacy.
Speaker 2: Think about a manual Lascar.
Speaker 1: The chess champ held the title for what twenty seven years?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he famously spent decades deliberately forgetting information.
Speaker 1: Forgetting what he believed.
Speaker 2: Having a small amount of well organized knowledge plus the
Speaker 2: ability to figure things out was way more powerful than
Speaker 2: just memorizing old games or openings.
Speaker 1: So it's not about having all the answers memorized.
Speaker 2: It's about having the framework to find the answers you
Speaker 2: need when you need them, like the Socratic method, always questioning,
Speaker 2: always learning what's relevant now.
Speaker 1: But there's a barrier here, isn't there this cursive knowledge thing?
Speaker 4: Ah? Yes?
Speaker 2: The Stanford research experts just they assume everyone knows what
Speaker 2: they know.
Speaker 3: They overestimate the baseline.
Speaker 2: Knowledge massively, and that makes communication incredibly hard. How do
Speaker 2: you find common ground when you can't even agree on
Speaker 2: the starting point. It's a huge hurdle insecurity awareness.
Speaker 1: So if just knowing facts is hard to apply and
Speaker 1: even harder to communicate, maybe the answer isn't more knowledge,
Speaker 1: but questioning the systems we rely on.
Speaker 2: That's perfect lead in to habit too skepticism.
Speaker 1: Right, we're talking about trust here, or rather not trusting.
Speaker 1: The zero trust idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pioneered by John Kinderveg. He looked at the old model,
Speaker 2: you know, strong walls, but once you're inside, everything's trusted.
Speaker 3: Castle and mote approach.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and he said that's broken because once the bad
Speaker 2: guys get inside, that.
Speaker 1: Parameter chicken roam free.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: His big insight was that trust itself is the vulnerability.
Speaker 2: We shouldn't inherently trust something just because it's inside.
Speaker 1: He had that great line, didn't he People aren't on
Speaker 1: the network, packets are yes.
Speaker 2: Don't trust based on location.
Speaker 4: He argued.
Speaker 2: Firewalls should basically ship with everything blocked, all ports labeled
Speaker 2: untrust by default.
Speaker 3: That's a total flip.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of that Reagan quote, the Russian.
Speaker 4: Proverb trust but verify.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Kindervag said, that's basically admitting you shouldn't have trusted
Speaker 1: in the first place.
Speaker 2: If you have to verify, it kind of undermines the
Speaker 2: trust part, doesn't it.
Speaker 1: It does, But okay, here's a tricky part. Psychologically we
Speaker 1: hear all the time in security maybe unofficially that people
Speaker 1: are the weakest link. That sounds pretty cynical.
Speaker 2: It does, and it clashes with things like the Pygmalion
Speaker 2: effect from psychology, where.
Speaker 1: High expectations actually lead to better performance.
Speaker 2: Exactly if you constantly tell people they're the weakest link, mm,
Speaker 2: maybe they'll live down to that expectation. To actually improve
Speaker 2: security behavior, you have to believe change is possible. You
Speaker 2: can't be purely cynical.
Speaker 1: So how do you square that? Be super skeptical of
Speaker 1: systems but optimistic about people.
Speaker 2: That feels like a contradiction, It sounds like one, but
Speaker 2: the source calls that sweet spot good judgment. It's holding
Speaker 2: both ideas at once. High trust in the potential of
Speaker 2: people your colleagues can learn and adopt better habits, but
Speaker 2: high skepticism for everything digital, the packets, the emails, the requests,
Speaker 2: because trusting those blindly is the vulnerability.
Speaker 1: So skepticism in practice means what slowing down?
Speaker 2: Slowing down? Yeah, calculating the risk, like a little mental
Speaker 2: cost or tax before you click or approve or connect.
Speaker 1: And we see the need for this even outside of
Speaker 1: pure cybersecurity, right like dealing with salespeace, Oh.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, sales tactics often mirror social engineering. They have those
Speaker 2: probing reconnaissance questions.
Speaker 1: So what kind of firewalls are you running currently exactly?
Speaker 2: Or they name drop other clients to build authority, just
Speaker 2: like Fisher might pretend to be from Microsoft.
Speaker 1: Or your bank, or the calendar invite trick. That one's sneaky.
Speaker 1: Explain that vendor sends you a meeting invite, but they
Speaker 1: see see like five of your colleagues. So you see it,
Speaker 1: you see your team is on it, and you just accept.
Speaker 1: You assume someone else okayate it or requested it, exploiting.
Speaker 2: That natural tendency to trust when others are involved. It
Speaker 2: bypasses your own skepticism.
Speaker 1: Check gets their foot in the digital door without really asking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and those kinds of tactics should set off alarm bells.
Speaker 2: Slow down, be skeptical, verify whether it's a salesperson or
Speaker 2: a potential.
Speaker 3: Fisher, which leads us right into habit three.
Speaker 2: Vigilance staying alert.
Speaker 1: The source frames this like the where's Waldo challenge? Finding
Speaker 1: that one specific thing in a sea of distractions.
Speaker 2: Right, vigilance is impassive. It takes effort, it's a state
Speaker 2: of mind, really, and it.
Speaker 4: Involves two steps.
Speaker 3: Okay, what are they?
Speaker 2: First, you have to filter, cut out the noise, silence,
Speaker 2: the constant pings and notifications, at least temporarily.
Speaker 1: Get rid of the distractions.
Speaker 3: Makes sense.
Speaker 2: Second, you have to actively scan. You're not just daring blankly.
Speaker 2: You're looking for something specific, red flags, anomalies, waldo.
Speaker 1: People have actually studied finding WALDO like mathematically.
Speaker 2: Apparently so, a programmer named Randy Olsen found the optimal
Speaker 2: search path start bottom left, move up diagonally like an
Speaker 2: inverted big dipper roughly.
Speaker 1: Ah, The point being, it's not random staring, it's a
Speaker 1: structured scan.
Speaker 2: It's applying an intentional method.
Speaker 1: Okay, so how do we apply that intentionality in our
Speaker 1: daily work? We need practical ways to boost vigilance when
Speaker 1: we need it. The source mentioned slow down and frown.
Speaker 2: Yeah it sounds a bit funny, but there's neuroscience behind it.
Speaker 1: Really, how does frowning help?
Speaker 2: Well, think about smiling. It releases endorphins, makes you feel relaxed,
Speaker 2: which actually lowers vigilance.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: Frowning conversely, is thought to send a little signal to
Speaker 2: your amygdala, the brain's thread detection center. It basically says hmm,
Speaker 2: environment might be unsafe and that naturally ramps up your alertness,
Speaker 2: your vigilance.
Speaker 1: So the advice is literally, if you're reading through emails,
Speaker 1: maybe try frowning or at.
Speaker 2: Least separate the reading an analysis part from the responding part.
Speaker 2: Read with a skeptical, maybe even slightly frowning focus. Then
Speaker 2: maybe relax and smile when you craft the reply. That
Speaker 2: physical act might shift your mental state.
Speaker 1: Interesting, But what about things that just drain our vigilance
Speaker 1: in no matter our facial expression, like time of day.
Speaker 4: Ah.
Speaker 2: Yes, timing is huge. Daniel Pink's research on chronotypes.
Speaker 4: Is key here.
Speaker 3: Our brains aren't consistent throughout the day.
Speaker 2: Not at all for most people. Analytical skills, the kind
Speaker 2: you need for vigilance peak in.
Speaker 1: The morning, and the source had some stark data on
Speaker 1: this from phishing tests.
Speaker 2: Extremely stark. Employees were eight times more likely to click
Speaker 2: a bad link late in the afternoon compared to the morning.
Speaker 1: Eight times when exactly was the danger zone.
Speaker 2: The clicks spiked significantly between three wards zero pm and
Speaker 2: five points zero pm. That afternoon slump is a real
Speaker 2: vulnerability window.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's incredibly actionable. Knowing that you can plan your.
Speaker 2: Day right, do the task that need high alertness, scrutinizing
Speaker 2: weird emails, checking financial reports in the morning when you're.
Speaker 1: Sharpest, and save the more routine, less critical stuff for
Speaker 1: that afternoon danger zone.
Speaker 2: Exactly, manage your energy and attention.
Speaker 1: So, wrapping this up, what's the big picture for you,
Speaker 1: the listener, We've hit three key habits literacy, having the
Speaker 1: right framework, skepticism, questioning trust itself, and vigilance managing your
Speaker 1: focus in timing.
Speaker 2: And the common thread is it's all about behavior changing
Speaker 2: how we act, not just buying another security tool.
Speaker 1: Definitely, And the final thought we wanted to leave you
Speaker 1: with it connects back to vigilance. How hard is it
Speaker 1: to stay vigilant against an enemy you can't see a nameless,
Speaker 1: faceless threat.
Speaker 2: It's really difficult psychologically, which is why there was value
Speaker 2: historically in giving enemies a face a name.
Speaker 1: Like in security operations centers when I started naming threats
Speaker 1: heart bleed, fancy bear, want to cry Exactly.
Speaker 2: It wasn't just for cool names. It gave the team
Speaker 2: something concrete to rally against.
Speaker 4: It boosted engagement.
Speaker 1: And in one case mentioned it actually helped triple the
Speaker 1: security budget because leadership finally saw the enemy they were fighting.
Speaker 4: It made the threat real.
Speaker 1: So getting these habits right, literacy, skepticism, vigilance, it's foundational.
Speaker 1: Maslow puts safety and security right near the base of
Speaker 1: his hierarchy, didn't he It's essential for reaching your potential.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, So the challenge is to start noticing your own habits.
Speaker 2: Apply these frameworks, and the sources suggest, you know, maybe
Speaker 2: find a coach or a mentor if you need help.
Speaker 2: Making security a collective behavioral effort, that's how we really
Speaker 2: move the needle.