The Cybersecurity Status Quo Needs to Change

This is a transcript of the video at the bottom of the post.

In 1997, I saw Apple's 'Here's to the Crazy Ones' commercial. It still resonates with me. Steve Jobs created much of that material from his own life. He didn't fit in. He was a misfit. He challenged the status quo. People called him crazy for dreaming too big, but he embraced his uniqueness and changed the world. I feel the same way about cybersecurity. There's a status quo, a movement we keep following, but it's not working. People call me crazy for wanting to challenge it, but the status quo is not working.

I know this. There's plenty of evidence in the data breaches every day. The status quo is failing. I believe the primary reason is that we've overly complicated cybersecurity. Instead of focusing on a few things and doing those few things very well, the few things that reduce the most risk, we try to get everyone to do hundreds of things. We can't do hundreds of things very well. We end up doing them all half-assed, really.

I used to work with this guy and I always think of this scenario. I used to work with him and he was working these two projects once, and he was having a little bit of trouble figuring out which one took priority or which one took precedence. So he went and asked his boss, which one of these two projects takes priority? His boss told him they’re both an equal priority. His response was, “Okay. Well, I guess I’ll do both of them half-assed.” It’s the same concept as cybersecurity. If we try to do too many things, we ended up doing them half-assed. We should focus on just a few things and do them very well. Most data breaches are caused by a misconfiguration or an unpatched system. These are two simple things to fix, but you can’t focus on those things if you’re focusing on the other 98 stuff, 98 items that don’t really matter. This time, we challenge the cybersecurity status quo. What we’re doing is not working. We need to think different, as Apple would say. Here’s to the crazy ones.

Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes, the ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules and they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.