People first for cyber protection

Consumer trust and understanding is fundamental to building relationships within the financial services sector, but this week the security industry has come under scrutiny from Facebook boss Alex Stamos for not having enough of a people focus.

Speaking at the opening keynote of this year’s Black Hat cybersecurity conference, he said that there is too much of an emphasis on solving a small number of technically complex hacks targeted at global organisations.

Rather than solely targeting these sophisticated attacks from nation-states or spies, cybersecurity professionals should demonstrate more concern for the day-to-day harm inflicted by smaller breaches in order to help the masses stay safe online.

Offering individuals simple tools and services which are more straightforward to use could reduce the loss of data across billions of users worldwide. For example, the majority of Facebook account takeovers are due to password reuse.

However to transform the industry in such a way it first requires a close consideration of why people are falling victim at the moment – and Stamos argues empathy is a skill not currently exercised by many security experts.