Schneier on Security

The following is an excerpt from an interview with Bruce Schneier. Matt Pasiewicz, EDUCAUSE content program manager, conducted the interview at the EDUCAUSE 2007 Annual Conference.
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MP: Bruce, perhaps you can get us started by sharing some of your thoughts about the psychology and economics of security.

Schneier: Security is a lot more about people than technology. One thing I’ve learned from studying economics, the psychology of risk, security, and people is that those problems are actually way harder than the tech problems. We have as much technology as we need, but securing the people end is hard. I’m doing a lot of research in psychology right now. People are very complex: they’re not linear and rational, and they’re not computers at all. We try to think of them as logical and rational, and that’s just not true. People have internal contradictions…. No matter how good the tech is, if we don’t solve the human end, it’s just not going to work…