Comprehensive verses Comprehension
I had a very strange encounter with a PCI auditor recently. On viewing my client’s security awareness portfolio he refused to sign it off as meeting PCI requirements because it didn’t cover ‘everything’. It got me thinking. There are two schools of thought when it comes to communicating risk. The first is the comprehensive approach where all the facts are presented. As part of this mindset, most organisations require their staff to read and agree to a security policy which is usually long and written in formal, contractual language. The majority of employees probably only skim their security policies and even if they did read them in full, would they understand them? Information security can be difficult to understand at the best of times without adding the additional complexity of overly formal and legalese phrasing. The Paretto Principle, or 80/20 rule, suggests that only a small percentage of content really matters but comprehensive approach usually means hiding it