Schneier on Security

As well as being Chief Security Technology Officer at BT, Bruce Schneier is also the author of several books on the topics of security and cryptography with a particular, if not exclusive, focus on the IT industry, which has led The Economist to describe him as a “security guru”. And when discussing security he is refreshingly candid and forthright, not dissimilar in tone to Freakonomics author Steven Levitt, while sharing with Levitt the ability to view his chosen field from an angle less ordinary.

“Security is hard to sell for two reasons, economic and psychological,” he says. The industry is not necessarily logical: it is by nature complex, and as a consequence easy to get wrong. The average buyer doesn’t necessarily understand the products on offer, while the industry player often cannot explain them adequately, meaning that “new companies with good ideas often end up floundering because they cannot communicate those ideas.” Psychologically, security is also complicated: Schneier points out the difference between “greed sales” and “fear sales”, where the former is a simple question of wanting something, while the latter is being afraid of the consequences of not having that thing…