SIX DEGREES of INFORMATION

 I don’t apologise for bringing Simon Cowell into the world of cybersecurity. Any followers during the auditions of X-Factor will have experienced Simon’s rebuff for anyone that has a different opinion of their singing ability compared to that of his, receiving the customary “your opinion, although interesting is irrelevant”. This doesn’t mean that Simon is always right, it’s just his opinion. Cybersecurity a decade ago was all about opinions. ‘Experts’ would attract a following by stating their opinions on the current and future activities of hackers based on belief, gut instinct and, if you were a vendor, using impressive acronyms, fear, uncertainty and doubt to sell your products. Accelerate forward a decade and securing your business, employees and customers is now a critical obligation to maintain business stability and growth. Uncorroborated opinions are now just noise, reserved for building followers, creation of sensationalised headlines and badly constructed marketing materials. Decades of research have shown that humans are so-called 'cognitive misers'. When we approach a problem, our natural default is to tap the least tiring cognitive process. Typically, this is what psychologists call type 1 thinking ; automatic, intuitive processes that are not very strenuous (Daniel Kahneman), in contrast to type 2 thinking , which is slower and involves processing more cues in the environment. When you drill it down, our thoughts about success, failure and beliefs, related to work and anything personal to us is driven by data, regardless of whether it comes from automatic type 1 or slower type 2 thinking. It’s your choice how much effort you want to spend understanding the subject [opinion].