Line Thorsen Sieg

What can cybersecurity learn from true crime?

Even if you’re not a fan of true crime documentaries or podcasts, you’re probably familiar with some of the well-known serial killers from USA in the 1980s. Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and the Golden State Killer to name a few.

Now what does this have to do with cybersecurity and CS-AWARE-NEXT? I promise there is a connection other than justifying my consumption of true crime podcasts during office hours!

Watching true crime documentaries, where the serial killer is caught much too late because they committed their crimes in different states or counties and the police stations didn’t share information across borders. In their defence, at the time, the technology wasn’t developed to do so.

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Cybersecurity & the Domino effect

A cyberattack is rarely caused by one big thing, but more often a combination of many little things. We see it all the time in disaster documentary film, how even the tiniest little detail can start a chain reaction with devastating results. A chain reaction that could have been stopped if even just one of the Dominos in the line were missing.

Take documentary film about plane crashes for example. We know flying is safe, we know how high the security priority is. In the events of a crash, we hear of all the frustratedly many small errors and we are left wondering how so many things have been overlooked.

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The importance of user role definition and access restrictions

Many of us have seen the cinematic masterpiece called The Lord of the Rings and can recall the scene where Pippin Took touches The Palantír (the glass orb looking thing with the eye of Sauron in it) and thus gave said villain an insight to his mind.

The bad news: Sauron knows everything Pippin knows. The good news: Pippin doesn’t know anything!

At first there is the panic when Gandalf thinks Sauron now knows everything, then there is the calmness of realising the ‘fool of a Took’ knows nothing that Sauron can use. If we compare that to real life: The panic of knowing your systems have been infiltrated, then the calmness of realising that the access is very limited and doesn’t cover any of the important parts of the IT system.

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The legend of The Scottish Thistle - the early version of a socio-technical defence system!

Technology is getting both advanced and effective, but what good does it do if we don’t understand and use it properly? Humans have a long history of using tools to help us make our jobs easier or for keeping us safe. However, technology can only do so much on it’s own. It needs a human touch to fulfil its full potential.

Lets jump right into a famous legend of humans and technology working together to prevent an approaching attack:

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