Hi, folks. This is the Cyberways podcast, and we
Speaker:translate our academic knowledge about information security into stuff that you
Speaker:can use as a security professional. We think it's a unique mission. We think you'll
Speaker:like it. I'm Tom Stafford. Craig Van Slyke. Tom and I are your hosts on
Speaker:your journey to knowledge. CyberWays is brought to you by the Louisiana Tech
Speaker:College of Business' Center For Information Assurance. The center offers
Speaker:undergraduate and graduate certificate programs in cybersecurity and
Speaker:sponsors academic research focused on behavioral aspects of cybersecurity
Speaker:security and information privacy. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to
Speaker:Cyberway. It's a production of the Louisiana Tech University Center For Information
Speaker:Assurance supported by a Just Business grant from college of business
Speaker:Dean Chris Martin. Today we have with us Karen Renaud
Speaker:and Mark Dupuy. They are doing some fascinating
Speaker:research on cybersecurity insights taken from world
Speaker:religions. Recent article appeared in Computers and Security. Doctor
Speaker:Renault is a Scottish computer scientist at University of Strathclyde in
Speaker:Glasgow, works in all manner of human centered security and
Speaker:privacy. Doctor Dupuis is an associate professor with the Computing
Speaker:and Software Systems Division, University of Washington, Bothell, where he also serves
Speaker:as the graduate program coordinator. He has his PhD information
Speaker:science from the University of Washington with an emphasis in cybersecurity.
Speaker:Welcome, Karen and Mark. Thank you so much. Thank
Speaker:you. Let's start with the big question that I
Speaker:think is gonna underlie a lot of what we talk about today.
Speaker:What's wrong with the way we currently practice cybersecurity? Rita,
Speaker:Janet, I'm not It's not working because there's no
Speaker:the number of attacks are not abating at all. So
Speaker:when when you keep doing the same thing and it's still not working, you have
Speaker:to think about, well, what do we what could we do differently in order to
Speaker:have more success? So at at a meta level, seems like
Speaker:we're not very successful. And I think in an organizational
Speaker:setting, I think one of the things that's not working is it's often kind of
Speaker:a us versus them. And if you think about it in an organizational
Speaker:setting, why are we doing that? It should be us,
Speaker:the employees, and the leadership against them, the
Speaker:people that are trying to cause harm to us as opposed to,
Speaker:the infighting that often takes place. It's it's counterproductive. And
Speaker:as Karen said, we're not we're not getting anywhere. We're not we're not,
Speaker:making improvements, and that's the problem. The other thing is that we have
Speaker:this paradigm in organizational cybersecurity, which is
Speaker:formulate the policy, disseminate the policy, and
Speaker:enforce the policy. And then when things go wrong, we just go
Speaker:back to disseminate again, and then we enforce again.
Speaker:And so it's almost as if it's it's like a vaccination. And if you just
Speaker:make the vaccination take, everything's gonna be fine. But
Speaker:this is we've been doing this for over 2 decades, and it's not very
Speaker:successful. So we have to start asking ourselves, what could
Speaker:we do differently? So one of the things that I was looking at
Speaker:y'all's body of research. One of the the things that struck
Speaker:me was that we seem to
Speaker:focus way too much on, negative emotions.
Speaker:You think that's one of the problems? Well, so Mark and I met at
Speaker:Hicks some the very first time. And I said to him,
Speaker:Mark, I want to do some research into the use of fear in cyber. And
Speaker:Mark was on board. That was the first paper we did.
Speaker:And we felt that a lot of the dissemination that is done in
Speaker:cybersecurity is a hook into people's minds was
Speaker:if you don't do this stuff, things are gonna be really bad. You're gonna get
Speaker:punished, and the hackers are gonna get in and so on. And so fear is
Speaker:being weaponized. And what Mark and I discovered was
Speaker:that this is a very damaging thing to do to people because fear is
Speaker:is an emotion that actually hurts you, and it lasts for much longer
Speaker:than we realize. But, Mark, maybe you could tell them about the password
Speaker:one that well, maybe I should we shouldn't go into that kind of depth
Speaker:now. Sorry. Well yeah. You know, I I think I'll just just briefly I
Speaker:think the thing I'll say is with with fear and other
Speaker:negative emotions, when when people get scared, they don't make
Speaker:the best decisions, but yet we're trying to use these negative emotions like fear to
Speaker:try and get them to do what we want them to do. So it's it
Speaker:seems kinda silly in in many respects that we're trying to get them to
Speaker:be compliant with these policies by scaring them
Speaker:when all of a sudden, and from a cognitive standpoint, they're gonna be less adept
Speaker:at doing what we want them to do. So I I you know, it's just
Speaker:it's very, counterproductive in many respects. And
Speaker:as, you know, some of our research has shown too that not only are we
Speaker:eliciting fear, but we're also increasing other negative emotions and
Speaker:decreasing positive emotions. So what are the other implications for this?
Speaker:Mhmm. Your concern is But we have this extensive criminal
Speaker:justice lens through which we view cybersecurity, and those of
Speaker:us who go to the to all the rude meetings see it all the time.
Speaker:All the leading authors started with a perspective of
Speaker:enforcement as as Karen so aptly put it. You know, promulgate
Speaker:the policy, enforce the policy, punish the people that don't adhere to it.
Speaker:It just doesn't feel like good organizational
Speaker:behavior, from a managerial perspective to be trying to get
Speaker:people to do the proper thing with
Speaker:negative reinforcement as opposed to building a positive
Speaker:culture, which which I I'm hoping is where we're we're headed at some point, but
Speaker:we don't see much research on it, do we? No. And I
Speaker:understand the fear. Right? Because I speak to CSOs a
Speaker:lot, and they're worried. They're they're the ones whose head is
Speaker:on the on the plateau when things go wrong. They're the ones who who have
Speaker:to answer the stories for the board, you know, why did we get hacked?
Speaker:So that fear is then being transmitted, and that's why they get
Speaker:all heavy with the normal average person in the organization.
Speaker:So the whole thing about the blaming and the fear culture is really
Speaker:unhelpful across the board. So I would agree with you, Tom.
Speaker:So your paper is about a religious view on
Speaker:cyber security, and I see that as eminently positive. You know, religion is
Speaker:a positive force in our life. It it speaks
Speaker:to doing good and and being good, and I'm very interested in
Speaker:how you bridge to that particular lens
Speaker:as a way of considering cybersecurity behavior in a new perspective.
Speaker:So I spent some time in Germany a few years ago, and I
Speaker:picked up 2 books before I left to read while I was there. The one
Speaker:was by Scott Atren, which is called talking to the enemy, and
Speaker:the other one was, Jonathan Haight, The Righteous Minds.
Speaker:Nothing to do with cyber. But both of these books really struck me
Speaker:in terms of trying to understand why people do what they
Speaker:do, and both of them spoke about our values.
Speaker:And then I started wondering what were the values that we were
Speaker:trying to get people to adopt in cybersecurity.
Speaker:And then I picked up a book by Alain de Beauforton, which is called religion
Speaker:for atheists. And then I realized, well, hang on. Why don't
Speaker:we learn from the people who do espouse values? Because religions
Speaker:all have values that their adherence espouse. So
Speaker:what what could we take? And but Du Boisoten says, don't
Speaker:throw the baby out with the bathwater. Let's look at religion and take the
Speaker:good parts and learn from it because they're very successful,
Speaker:and and and then don't take the stuff that's not so great. And so that's
Speaker:kind of where this idea came from. And I I zoomed Mark
Speaker:from, from Germany, and he said, yeah. I'm in.
Speaker:So that's that's where the ideas came from. So what did you
Speaker:hope to find in, in applying this new focus on on cybersecurity?
Speaker:Well, I think a lot of it is, you know, like Karen said is, you
Speaker:know, religions have those that have stood the test of time have stood the test
Speaker:of time for for a reason. And and some of them have,
Speaker:you know, a lot of them have stood the test of time, have adapted, evolved,
Speaker:and changed, as times have changed, as our society has
Speaker:changed. And, by doing that, they have,
Speaker:met the needs of of the people they're serving, of of their believers.
Speaker:And, and there's something that could be learned from that. And we
Speaker:think about some of these religions have been around for 1000
Speaker:of years And, you know, in cybersecurity, you
Speaker:know, being around for, you know, 20, 30 years at the
Speaker:most, really. And so what can we do as
Speaker:such a new discipline? What can we take from religion
Speaker:and and try and learn from it? Because, you know, as we said earlier, we're
Speaker:not we're not successful. We're not we're not very successful in what we're doing, and
Speaker:the problems are only getting worse. So let's let's be humble
Speaker:enough. Right? Let's let's show some humility and let's try and learn from
Speaker:these other areas like religion and and see what we
Speaker:can take. And instead of just this compliance and and this
Speaker:punishment of people that are trying just
Speaker:to do their day to day jobs, most of them are not in there to
Speaker:do cybersecurity. They're being tasked with it
Speaker:in often an unfair way when they're there to
Speaker:do pretty much anything but cybersecurity. But what what can we take
Speaker:from other places, other, you know, other disciplines like religion
Speaker:and and learn from it to help us to help us be more successful.
Speaker:And, you know, as Karen said, you know, there there's there's a lot to be
Speaker:learned from. So let's learn a little bit from religion.
Speaker:I wanna dig into just what religion is. So it's one of those things where
Speaker:we all know what it is, but we don't really know kind of what it's
Speaker:made up of. Can you talk to us a little bit about what actually
Speaker:religion does or what its components are? When I I started
Speaker:writing this paper, I thought, well, the first thing to do is define. Right? Whenever
Speaker:you have a new concept in a paper, you have to define it. And it
Speaker:turned out that people are struggle to define religion.
Speaker:So, having read a number of people who said, you know, nobody can
Speaker:agree on it, So, okay, let's go and look at it from a different way.
Speaker:And I found somebody called Durkheim, who's a very well known German academic,
Speaker:who said that religion has 3 dimensions. It's
Speaker:believing, belonging, and doing. And
Speaker:then when I found some other papers that also tried to say, these are
Speaker:the characteristics of religions, I found that they also fell into those three
Speaker:dimensions. And that made it a lot easier to an to kind of
Speaker:start interpreting how what we are doing and what
Speaker:religions do. Can you tell us a little bit about the problem? Part is that,
Speaker:you know, if you go to somebody who's an adherent of a particular religion, they
Speaker:can tell you what they believe in. And they also
Speaker:know what kinds of things they should do. So they may believe in in
Speaker:if it's a Christian, they would believe that they have to be kind to other
Speaker:people and forgive people when things people do bad things to them and that sort
Speaker:of thing. So the believing and the doing is easy to understand. But the
Speaker:belonging was the one that was really came across strongly in all the
Speaker:the religious related literature because people get a
Speaker:sense of belonging to their community. They meet weekly with their
Speaker:community a lot of the time. And that sense that I am a
Speaker:Christian or I am a Muslim or whatever, that was part of became
Speaker:part of their identity. And so those three things were the
Speaker:aspects of religion that people seem to, you know,
Speaker:cohere to. There's also the nature of, I think,
Speaker:the belonging aspect of of of your model to
Speaker:me speaks to what I've always considered to be the important part
Speaker:of cybersecurity, which is belonging to the team that secures
Speaker:the company. Mhmm. And I I see that as a a very useful
Speaker:metaphor taking religious perspective. Yeah. I I I
Speaker:think, you know, the the belonging part
Speaker:is in many respects, the one big area where we're
Speaker:lacking maybe more than the others. Because I mean, we we all can believe,
Speaker:oh, you need to do this. You need to be aware of this. You need
Speaker:to watch out for that. Make sure you do this and and so on. But
Speaker:building that sense of community that, hey, we're all in this together,
Speaker:that, we know mistakes are gonna happen, that we we realize
Speaker:this is tough to do, that we're not all, at at the
Speaker:same level of understanding these different threats and so on. That,
Speaker:I I I believe, is really where we're lacking and we're not doing a good
Speaker:job of. And I think you look at successful religions, you look
Speaker:at people that, want to go to church, and it's not always just
Speaker:to sit there and and listen
Speaker:to a sermon for an hour, but it's oftentimes those other
Speaker:activities. It's gathering for to share a meal together. It's it's
Speaker:it's just being with one another. It's it's that sense of belonging,
Speaker:that community that you have that we just don't
Speaker:see in in cybersecurity. It's
Speaker:it's it's this very this top down approach. It's this punishment approach.
Speaker:And, you know, I I think as we think about the
Speaker:success of religions and and a sense of belonging, we
Speaker:just we are so lacking with respect to that sense of belonging in
Speaker:cybersecurity. Can I take a tangent here? As you were
Speaker:were all talking about this, I was trying to
Speaker:translate in my mind the idea of
Speaker:belonging to something like a church or a religion
Speaker:versus a sense of belonging at work. And so my
Speaker:church and my religion, for a lot of people that are
Speaker:religious, it's very intertwined with their personal lives.
Speaker:So it is part of their life. I grew up in the Baptist
Speaker:church, and it was you know, it could be 3 nights a
Speaker:week going and doing something all day on Sunday.
Speaker:So that was intimate part of who you were. And
Speaker:I don't know if we get there with work. I know work is part of
Speaker:our identity, but I I wonder if it's a problem of
Speaker:intensity or the extent to which it's intertwined
Speaker:in our real lives. You know, we tend to separate
Speaker:work and personal lives, but religion is part of
Speaker:the personal life. That's a really interesting point because it
Speaker:is work and I guess we have our work tribe and we have our home
Speaker:tribes. But I did another piece of research which is under
Speaker:review right now with some other people in Germany. We asked
Speaker:people, if they ever discussed cybersecurity with other
Speaker:people, and they all said no. And then we asked them whether they
Speaker:would like to discuss cyber with other people, and most of them said yes.
Speaker:So it's the kind of thing that people don't talk to each other about at
Speaker:all, where people in the same religion would talk about their religion. So
Speaker:it's almost as though people don't feel that that's something they can do.
Speaker:Whereas a if there's 2 Christians, 2 Muslims, any Buddhists,
Speaker:they would talk about this religion of theirs. Right? So it's almost like it's a
Speaker:solo sport right now instead of a team sport at work. That's
Speaker:an apt point. I I've always felt that
Speaker:many organizations were groups of people each traveling their
Speaker:own way and the challenge of the manager is always to harness their activities
Speaker:in concert with each other. When it comes to something so mission critical,
Speaker:it's protecting the company's assets from external access.
Speaker:So so do you think part of the problem is the negativity
Speaker:around cybersecurity? So we don't talk about doing cybersecurity
Speaker:well. It's when there's an incident, when something bad happens. And
Speaker:who wants to talk about that? I wonder if it's all wrapped up in the
Speaker:fear of the virus. And 3 people fall for a fish, but 3
Speaker:1,000 didn't, who are we talking about? We're talking about those 3.
Speaker:And and so, yes, it it's it's a kind of an a mindset that
Speaker:we felt when we were looking at religion really ought to change
Speaker:and this mutually supporting thing. Because when I've studied events
Speaker:where there have been cyber, breaches, the first thing that happens is the
Speaker:person who's responsible, who may be clicked on the fish or something, they're
Speaker:immediately ostracized. They're immediately pushed into the corner and
Speaker:how dare you do this and how could you have been so stupid. That's that's
Speaker:not what a church would do. They would try to help the person do better.
Speaker:Or not the church, but I mean people in the same religion. Or
Speaker:or burn you at the stake. 1 or 2. Never. Not
Speaker:anymore. Not anymore. Sorry. That was a long time ago. Karen makes a point though.
Speaker:Craig and I both come from the Baptist heritage and then and the Baptist
Speaker:creed of faith is everybody's going to hell unless they do their best to be
Speaker:a good person. No. That's that's putting it too strongly. Everybody's inherently
Speaker:a sinner and seeking forgiveness and doing good
Speaker:works is the avenue away from, the outcome.
Speaker:And I I see the parallel with what you what you just put voice to
Speaker:your current. I think too is it's it's
Speaker:almost difficult to wrap our mind around how would we do this with cybersecurity.
Speaker:But, difficult but not impossible. Right? Because I I
Speaker:think about places I worked previously where, you know, maybe
Speaker:a smaller office environment where maybe there's 50
Speaker:to 75 people working there where, you know, we would
Speaker:have potlucks and and different things. We would have, decorate
Speaker:our office for Halloween and these other activities and have fun things and and
Speaker:build that sense of community. Well, you know, like like Karen said, you know, you
Speaker:know, what if there is a a fishing simulation exercise and,
Speaker:yeah, 3 people fall for it, but everyone else does it? Well, what if we
Speaker:have a a pizza party or something, right, some kind of celebration,
Speaker:for all those that didn't fall for? We don't even mention the fact that
Speaker:there's a few that didn't. And and we just, you know, again, build that
Speaker:sense of community. And we we talk about, how successful
Speaker:we were, or or celebrate these things and and come
Speaker:together. And and I think because it sounds so foreign, it seems
Speaker:silly to think about that. But and that may not be the exact approach,
Speaker:but I don't think it's impossible to think about how we can build this
Speaker:sense of belonging in cybersecurity because the fact of the matter
Speaker:is is this isn't a solo sport. We're not in this
Speaker:individually. We're in this together, but we do act like and
Speaker:it's treated like we're in this individually. At the end of
Speaker:the day, you know, the organization will be impacted. We're
Speaker:all impacted directly and indirectly at at some point in
Speaker:time. So we need to kind of start getting creative with how
Speaker:we're gonna create the sense of belonging and community
Speaker:within organizations.
Speaker:That that fits with what Karen said about mindset. That's one of
Speaker:the things I'm hearing here is we need to really have a shift in mindset.
Speaker:To to get at this, you interviewed a number of religious leaders
Speaker:from a variety of different religious traditions.
Speaker:So what did you find? When we analyzed, we didn't specifically ask him about belonging,
Speaker:believing, and doing. We just asked him in a bunch of questions, which I think
Speaker:we've included in the paper. And what happened when we
Speaker:analyzed it was, well, unsurprisingly, belonging, believing, and doing
Speaker:kind of filtered up, and we could group them into those 3 stupid
Speaker:themes. And what came across with with the
Speaker:one the final question was, you know, how could cybersecurity learn? And they all
Speaker:said, oh, you know, you need not to be so harsh on people when they
Speaker:make mistakes. Cyber is hard. And we saw a sense of forgiveness coming
Speaker:across, a sense of grace for the imperfect
Speaker:human. And that we kind of had expected that, but it was really
Speaker:gratifying when we heard it from them.
Speaker:But the interesting part was they said the one guy said,
Speaker:well, you know, when did he did cybersecurity training when he was a
Speaker:student at university? It it was just like a checkbox thing. He did
Speaker:it online. He finished it. He answered the questions, and he was done for the
Speaker:next year. But he said at his church, when they get
Speaker:together, they talk about concepts. They talk about the difficulties they're having
Speaker:when they have their community get together. So he said, why don't we do that?
Speaker:That was exactly what I was hoping if somebody was going to tell me.
Speaker:You know, he was he made he made that contrast for me.
Speaker:One one of the issues that I see from an organizational theory perspective
Speaker:is the notion of agency. The organization
Speaker:is formed as an informal and sometimes
Speaker:actually formalized contract between the people who own the company, the
Speaker:principals, and the people they hire to do the work for them, the agents, and
Speaker:the agents are economically rational. They will they
Speaker:will do things they shouldn't do if they feel like they can get away with
Speaker:it and and it's to their benefit. Mhmm. The distinction in the religious
Speaker:view is the principal agent component is not
Speaker:there. There's no economic rationality. There's there's no
Speaker:if you think about it, no pragmatic payoff for being good other than being good
Speaker:for goodness' sake, which is
Speaker:faith, which I find very I find that to be a very compelling aspect of
Speaker:this religious view that you take of cybersecurity. People doing
Speaker:good security for its own sake, rather than because it's
Speaker:their job or because the boss will sanction them. But also maybe
Speaker:learning to do what's right for the community. Right?
Speaker:Rather than just doing what's what I'm scared not to do.
Speaker:I've long felt that the, the criminal justice perspective on
Speaker:cybersecurity, had issues
Speaker:because it it treats people as problems when in fact your
Speaker:solution is isn't it? Yes. So that
Speaker:that leads into something that I thought was perhaps the
Speaker:most interesting part of the paper, and that's the idea
Speaker:of sacred values. Tom, you were kind of alluding to that.
Speaker:You know, be good for goodness sake. It's because that's what you do
Speaker:regardless of everything else. If it costs you money, if it costs
Speaker:you your position, costs you your material wealth,
Speaker:you still do we we talk about doing doing what's right
Speaker:because it's right. That's a sacred value.
Speaker:So what are sacred values and how do they
Speaker:apply in this context? Mark.
Speaker:This this is not a quiz, so Well, I mean, well, what
Speaker:row. I was gonna real quickly, maybe touch
Speaker:on the prior question if that's okay. And I
Speaker:I think it's just some interesting insight from the
Speaker:religious leaders with kind of that sense of
Speaker:belonging where, you know, they they touched on
Speaker:how we are all different, and we have a lot of differences
Speaker:between us, but how we should focus also on what's common
Speaker:between us. And it's kind of that sense of belonging, you know, bringing us together
Speaker:as a community and how we are there to help each other,
Speaker:help us as as people. And by doing that, we can
Speaker:create that sense of trust, between us. You know? And I see
Speaker:that not really being done very well in organizations. It's it's often like,
Speaker:oh, this person doesn't know what they're doing, but they're gonna click on that phishing
Speaker:email. They're gonna hurt us as an organization and and so
Speaker:on. And so, you know, that was some interesting insight with respect to
Speaker:belonging. And then you look at believing, an interesting comment
Speaker:from one of the religious leaders was, you know, go where the people are rather
Speaker:than just expecting the people to come. And, you know, again, I
Speaker:I thought it was just some very interesting insight
Speaker:of, you know, hey. You know, reach out. Don't just
Speaker:wait for something bad to happen, but be proactive. You know, be
Speaker:available to the to these people that, again, are not there
Speaker:to do cybersecurity but are being tasked with it in an often and
Speaker:unfair manner, but be available to them.
Speaker:So, you know, that it's just some other things that I wanted to to
Speaker:share. One of the things that somebody said was be humble.
Speaker:The people who are asking other folks to do cybersecurity actions
Speaker:should be humble and not act like they know everything. And that that
Speaker:was interesting as well. I'm intrigued by the notion of
Speaker:morality. I always have been. And morality is
Speaker:deeply seated in the concept of religion. I I wonder if maybe
Speaker:it it it transfers over to your research perspective
Speaker:because my sense of organizations is companies
Speaker:have no religion. They are the inherently amoral
Speaker:entities. They do what is legal. And sometimes as I tell
Speaker:my students, amorality is doing what is not
Speaker:prescribed by law or what you think you might not be caught at.
Speaker:And you know it's not right, but you don't think you're gonna get caught. Organizations
Speaker:are not moral, centers,
Speaker:if you will. And then that I think that has to change
Speaker:because cybersecurity requires everybody caring for the good of the all as
Speaker:opposed to everybody looking out for themselves. Don't you think? Yes. Can I just
Speaker:get back to the sacred values that, Craig asked about? When
Speaker:I when I read Scott Atron's book, he said that,
Speaker:people, you know, you could challenge other values they
Speaker:had. But when you went near their sacred values, they it was not
Speaker:negotiable. Right? And so what I kept thinking was we
Speaker:don't even try to incalculate the values into people in
Speaker:cyber. We give them a list of do's and don'ts. We don't actually
Speaker:try to make that part of them that becomes nonnegotiable.
Speaker:And and you were talking about integrity. I've done a study into whistleblowers,
Speaker:and they also said, we saw this and we had to
Speaker:speak because it was our integrity that was a
Speaker:question. So for them, that integrity was their kind of
Speaker:sacred value. But we that it seems to be a completely alien
Speaker:concept in cyber at the moment that we we try to find
Speaker:the values that people should endorse and
Speaker:embrace. Let me see if I can tie this back to what what
Speaker:Tom was talking about. So morality
Speaker:isn't a static, universal thing. I mean, we have
Speaker:some things that we view as largely universal, but
Speaker:you brought up a really important point in your paper that ties into all of
Speaker:this. So the idea is if we can get
Speaker:employees to tie into the security sacred values,
Speaker:then they'll do anything to avoid violating those values.
Speaker:But then you brought up a really important point and I'm literally gonna read it.
Speaker:While cybersecurity professionals could easily commit to these values, talking
Speaker:about the cybersecurity sacred values, we
Speaker:do not know the extent to which individual employees will be able to commit
Speaker:to these relatively broad categories and or convert them
Speaker:into action, nor do we know whether they are effective
Speaker:candidates to serve as the higher values foundation
Speaker:grounding our vision. Yeah. I think that's the rub.
Speaker:That the sacred values for the employees getting some and
Speaker:Tom, you kind of talked about this idea of alignment in in
Speaker:management. I think that's gonna be the neat trick, and if we can
Speaker:figure out how to do that, a lot of other things may fall into place.
Speaker:So what do you all think about that idea? I think that's a big part
Speaker:of the challenge is it's creating that culture that is
Speaker:going to work from, you know, from
Speaker:the bottom to the top and vice versa. And that's that's
Speaker:a really big challenge. It goes to these sacred values
Speaker:that were espoused by the religious leaders, you know, working
Speaker:together to support others. And it's not easy. Everyone is
Speaker:there trying to, for the most part, do their job, make make
Speaker:their money, go home, and and, you know, deal with their lives outside
Speaker:of work. And when things are complicated
Speaker:and, you know, you probably see eye rolls and you see other things
Speaker:I have a couple kids, so I see that plenty. But then, you know, you
Speaker:you're tasking them with other things that complicate matters. It can be
Speaker:difficult to get that buy in. But if you
Speaker:are successful and if you can do that, you can really see
Speaker:some amazing things happen. And and it is possible. You know, you
Speaker:see things that have been done. You look
Speaker:at at Demian and what was done with Toyota in the 19
Speaker:fifties. This humongous shift. These humongous shifts in
Speaker:culture can happen, and they do happen, and they are effective.
Speaker:Why can't this happen with cybersecurity in organizational settings?
Speaker:It can. You know? We just need to figure it out. And I think this
Speaker:is a starting place for some discussions of what this might look
Speaker:like. You know, how this can be effectuated? You know, we still have some
Speaker:work to do to figure that out and to try it out, but it it
Speaker:is possible. It is. You're in my wheelhouse now
Speaker:when you bring up Deming because Deming was issued by all the major
Speaker:US automakers as being irrelevant. So he went to Toyota
Speaker:out of desperation to sell his idea, and he he
Speaker:landed in a culture which espouses
Speaker:collectivism, which means the good of all as opposed to the good of the one,
Speaker:whereas the companies who turned him down are strictly into economic
Speaker:outcomes for the 1, maximized personal outcome, which is really, I think,
Speaker:the the issue in the a moral approach to business. I I I don't
Speaker:know. I'm I'm on a soapbox now, so I'll stop. But I I wanted to,
Speaker:to ask you whether you think that the notion in the title of your
Speaker:paper, shame, has an irrelevance or if that's just
Speaker:something that we try to avoid by doing good. And if I
Speaker:could just interject, that's that's another paper that's in this kind of
Speaker:overall we need to do security differently theme. And
Speaker:assuming that Mark and Karen are willing, we're going to have
Speaker:them back to talk about that paper because it was just too much for one
Speaker:episode. So I just want wanted to to kind of give the backstory
Speaker:here. And that's one that we followed the fear one with because it felt as
Speaker:if people were being shamed when they did make a mistake,
Speaker:and that was my sense. And then when Mark gathered
Speaker:all our bunch of data, it actually happened to loads of people where
Speaker:they where they done something silly, clicked on a message or whatever.
Speaker:And there was then the organization would people would yell at
Speaker:them, and they would they would get, you know, ostracized
Speaker:by their by their because now everyone had to go for the training
Speaker:again, and everyone couldn't work that day while the folks, IT folks,
Speaker:had to sort the computers out and everything. And the what the people
Speaker:went through was awful. You know? And and what we
Speaker:discovered was, interestingly, there's a difference between shame and guilt.
Speaker:Guilt says, you did this silly thing. Here's what you can do to
Speaker:make up for it. Shame says, you are the stupid
Speaker:person. It's an attack on you as a as a human. So then
Speaker:what you get is a self defense response. And what we also
Speaker:discovered is that what you do when you shame people is create an insider
Speaker:threat. It's very, very counterproductive.
Speaker:The organization does not end up ahead like maybe they think they're gonna
Speaker:end up ahead. So it's it's very counterproductive. So
Speaker:we're we're gonna leave that as foreshadowing for our later
Speaker:episode. We're starting to run up against our time
Speaker:limit, so could you
Speaker:give us kind of the 3 or 4 messages
Speaker:that you want our practitioner listeners, our
Speaker:cybersecurity professionals, to take away from what you found in
Speaker:your work. I'm gonna punt that to Mark. I've I've spoken a
Speaker:lot. Sorry. One thing I will say, and
Speaker:maybe this isn't a direct answer to your question, but maybe one thing I'll say
Speaker:just as a follow-up to the same question is is one thing we sought
Speaker:out to do here was to learn
Speaker:from world religions what we could apply to
Speaker:cybersecurity and make cybersecurity better. One thing that
Speaker:we did not seek to do was to porch portray
Speaker:that world religions were without any issues
Speaker:or faults of their own, that there weren't any problems or challenges. And I mentioned
Speaker:that because, obviously, plenty of religions
Speaker:use shame. They use fear. They use other things that we do
Speaker:not think should be used in cybersecurity. So I did I did want to
Speaker:mention that that we're trying to say, you know, what does make world religion
Speaker:successful? How can we take that and apply that to cybersecurity?
Speaker:And so, you know, with that in mind, I think some of the things
Speaker:that some of the major takeaways with respect
Speaker:to these higher values and thinking about, you know, the idea of
Speaker:for me, one of the big ones is a sense of belonging and
Speaker:and building that community, caring for others, wanting
Speaker:others to be successful, to succeed. And
Speaker:that can only be accomplished if, you know, instead
Speaker:of just punishing and looking at other people and saying, hey. You did this
Speaker:wrong. Instead being like, hey. You know,
Speaker:this this types of things happen. We know it's challenging. Let's figure out
Speaker:how we can make this make everyone more successful. Let's you know, what
Speaker:are we doing on our end that, we could do better?
Speaker:You know? So it's not just the employee, but what is the organizational
Speaker:what is the organization doing that, is making it more
Speaker:difficult? You know, what could what can the organization be doing better? And
Speaker:and, you know, just working together to support others, to share this knowledge,
Speaker:to care for each other in in a real meaningful way. And so I
Speaker:I think that that sense of belonging for me is is a really big
Speaker:one that I think religions,
Speaker:maybe in an often ideally idealized,
Speaker:can do very successfully. With cyber, we seem to be stuck in a bit
Speaker:of a a rut where we this is the way we do cybersecurity,
Speaker:and things like generational AI has come have
Speaker:come along, and we have to be able to adapt. But
Speaker:because of the fear based approach, people are almost frozen in the way they're
Speaker:doing stuff and that they're too scared to adapt. So it's really
Speaker:about taking the good parts. I agree with Mark there absolutely.
Speaker:The the religion does belonging pretty well. Let's try and figure that out.
Speaker:Also, the the sacred values were the thing we've put in as our
Speaker:as our this needs to be done because we didn't actually arrive at those.
Speaker:We didn't have the bandwidth to do that with this study, but that's definitely
Speaker:something we want to work on next. So when we
Speaker:were talking about it, Shane earlier, Craig mentioned that it seems a
Speaker:likely topic of your next paper, even though it's it's partially
Speaker:covered here. Tell us about what the next step is in your research because this
Speaker:is fascinating. We need an alternative to, pardon the metaphor, the
Speaker:hellfire and brimstone of a criminal justice perspective in current cybersecurity
Speaker:practice. So Mark and I are looking at this whole issue of
Speaker:sacred values with a another friend, at one of the London
Speaker:universities, and we're really hoping to arrive at a set of values
Speaker:that we could offer to the cybersecurity community to
Speaker:say, these are the things that we think that people could possibly
Speaker:espouse in order to help them. For for secure cyber
Speaker:security to become something that they don't even question that they just do, and
Speaker:you wouldn't have to have the compliance stick to beat them with. We
Speaker:also did a paper on regret, which is can be negative, but
Speaker:it turned out it can also be a positive thing. So if you make a
Speaker:mistake once, you can learn from it. I want to
Speaker:be understood. Organizational theory, Leon Festinger. Everybody
Speaker:knows him for cognitive dissonance, but attribution theory Uh-huh. Was his
Speaker:big thing, organizationally. And then the notion is
Speaker:people hate to fail, and they're more motivated by figuring out what
Speaker:they did wrong and keeping that from happening again than they are
Speaker:figuring out what went right. Because they expect to do well, but they don't expect
Speaker:to fail and they wanna avoid failure. But I was actually what
Speaker:triggered this, Craig, was we managed to put the name of a song in the
Speaker:title. So the title is
Speaker:from Edith Piaf. Nice. I've been wanting to
Speaker:do that for years. So we've we've been talking
Speaker:with doctor Karen LeNo and Mark Dupuy, today about their
Speaker:fascinating perspective on cybersecurity and doing our part to
Speaker:spread the faith of doing good in the workplace. This
Speaker:is cyber ways, a production of Louisiana Tech University College
Speaker:of Business supported by Dean Chris Martin's just business grant.
Speaker:You can download it wherever podcasts are found, and we dearly love if you tell
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Speaker:the Cyberways podcast is funded through the just business grant program
Speaker:of Louisiana Tech College of Business, and, we're
Speaker:grateful for that. So join us next time on the Cyberways podcast, which is
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