Cyber Chat Episode 3 – How much do you value your cybersecurity?

In Episode 3 of Cyber Chat, Rob May looks at how much an organisation’s employees value cybersecurity. And answers the question, would they give up their password for a mars bar?

Managing the ongoing cybersecurity of your IT infrastructure should be a primary concern – whatever the shape or size of your organisation. Cybersecurity breaches are the number one threat in today’s business landscape. Incidents come in many forms: cyber attacks; laptops left on trains; malicious staff; or, even more simply, accidental data loss caused by human error. The human firewall is vital as a line of defence for any organisation and in this video Rob, author of The Human Firewall (available on Amazon) explains what the Human Firewall is.

Find out more about ramsac’s cybersecurity services

Cyber Chat – Episode 3 – video transcript

Hi I’m Rob May. I’m MD of ramsac and welcome to Cyber Chat.

I wonder how much you value your data and your security. There’s an event on every year, at Olympia called Infosec and all the cyber experts from across EMEA, come together for 2 days to talk about the latest and greatest things that are happening in cyber. And believe or not for someone like me, that’s good fun!
And 2 years ago, when Infosec was on, they did a survey at Liverpool Street Station and they were stopping people, they were stopping commuters, on their way to work and on their way home, and they were asking them a series of questions but the first 3 questions were, ‘What’s your name?’ ‘Who do you work for?’ and ‘What’s your network password?’ 34% of people who were stopped, filled out the form.

Which is just bonkers. But I think the thing that’s really interesting, is these people were surrounded by boxes of Mars bars and if anybody said ‘No, on your bike!’ or an appropriate response. They’d say, ‘what If I give you a Mars Bar?’ 70% of the people who were stopped filled out that form. Now, the cynic in me says, that a whole load of people will have lied in order to get to Mars Bar. But the fact that 34% of people filled out the form from the get go, would suggest that a chunk of that Data is real data.

And the thing with cyber is it’s a numbers game and not everything they get is going to be legitimate, but a big chunk of it, A big chunk of it is. So just because you wouldn’t dream of doing that, don’t think that people in your team wouldn’t. and you need to make sure that people are aware, and that people care about your data and your network. So, stay safe, I hope that’s useful. And I look forward to speaking to you again soon. Thank you.