ISSA Security Awareness Column March 2013 – Lowering Security Awareness

We spend a lot of time talking about how to raise security awareness. We fill entire books, columns and conferences with it. However, anything that can go up must also go down. How about we turn the phrase on its head and ask what lowers security awareness? Just as there are behaviours that raise security awareness there are also some that lower security awareness. But what can we do about it? Name and shame was an important step in getting software vendors to deal with security vulnerabilities in their products. We should be equally critical when human vulnerabilities are created through the promotion of unsafe attitudes and behaviours. In this column I’m going to name and shame particularly egregious examples which I think reduces security awareness.