Andy Ellis on Risk Assessment
Andy Ellis, the CSO of Akamai, gave a great talk about the psychology of risk at the Business of Software conference this year.
I’ve written about this before.
One quote of mine: “The problem is our brains are intuitively suited to the sorts of risk management decisions endemic to living in small family groups in the East African highlands in 100,000 BC, and not to living in the New York City of 2008.”
EDITED TO ADD (12/13): Epigenetics and the human brain.
Edward • December 6, 2019 8:58 AM
Some parts of our brains may still function at the level they did in 100,000 BC, but not all of them. Evolution did not grind to a halt at that point. Even if we reject the idea that that our brains have changed genetically, they have certainly changed due to epigenetics.
This is a good discussion of epigenetics and the human brain:
https://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/epigenetics/brain/.
From the same source, there is evidence that epigenetic changes can be inherited:
https://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/epigenetics/inheritance/.
I tend to think that we are still evolving ways to deal with modern risk. We don’t step out in front of cars (usually) even though there were no cars 100,000 years ago. We have learned to multi-task in relation to modern dangers just as we had to in relation to East African predators.
Perhaps computer security is still too abstract for us, but we can and some of us do develop a seemingly instinctive distrust of phishing attempts, email attachments and similar enticements to risky cyber-behavior.