Human Nature Is Causing Our Cybersecurity Problem

Once a niche craft spurred by the digital revolution, cyberattacks have exploded into the biggest threat to businesses today. Despite the significant consequences of a security breach, including increased liability and growing government regulation, organizations continue to fail to stop attackers. From the outside looking in, it would seem logical to conclude that all efforts would be made to secure our digital infrastructure. Yet, we find the opposite to be true. Many organizations continue to put off adopting modern processes, best practices, and critical tooling. But why?

The simple truth is that there is a motivational deficit when it comes to implementing effective measures. This shouldn't be all that surprising, though. Human beings are genetically predisposed to procrastination — a tendency well-documented in both psychological and behavioral economic research.

This predisposition, often called temporal discounting, explains why people delay important tasks that offer long-term benefits in favor of immediate gratification. We see this behavior in various aspects of life. We all know someone who rarely performs regular maintenance on their car, puts off their yearly health screening, or fails to consider how they'll support themselves in retirement actively. Even if you aren't putting those major life tasks on hold, we all have a story of failing to take necessary actions until it's almost too late or we have no other choice.

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