In the years running up to the beginning of the second world war the British government was extremely concerned that in the event of hostilities breaking out, the german Luftwaffe would launch significant attacks against Britain and especially London. With an estimated 250,000 casualties in the first week alone, the consensus was that millions of Londoners would flee, leaving the industrial war engine to grind to a halt. Several psychiatric hospitals were even set up on the outskirts of London to handle the huge numbers of casualties psychologically affected by the bombing.

History tells us this was not the case, despite horrific numbers of casualties and extensive damage to homes, property and businesses throughout London.

A Canadian psychiatrist, J. T. MacCurdy, in his book The Structure of Morale postulated this was because the effect of a bomb falling on a population splits them into three groups:

1. The people killed by the bomb. As MacCurdy puts it

the morale of the community depends on the reaction of the survivors, so from that point of view, the killed do not matter. Put this way the fact is obvious, corpses do not run about spreading panic.

Harsh, but true in this model.

2. The Near Misses, the ones that

feel the blast, … see the destruction… but they survive, deeply impressed. It may result in ‘shock’…and a preoccupation with he horrors that have been witnessed.

3. The Remote Misses. These are the people who hear the sirens, the bombs explode, watch the aircraft overhead, but the bombs explode down the street. For them the experience of the bombing is that they survived easily, unlike the Near Miss group. The emotion as a result of the attack…

is a feeling of excitement with a flavor of invulnerability.

Near miss = trauma, remote miss = invulnerability.

Diaries and recollections of the period certainly support these theories. For instance, when a laborer was asked if he wanted to be evacuated to the countryside (after being bombed out of his house twice) he replied;

What, and miss all this? Not for all the tea in China!

The reason for this attitude, the sense of invulnerability, is that they have been through the very worst of time… and survived. They had faced their fears, and realized they were not as bad as they thought they were going to be, and in fact the result of surviving had given them a sense of elation that made them feel even more alive than before.

This is a very long way of saying that we may very easily view security incidents and breaches like this. Sony (perhaps) are the ones right at the centre of the blast. they are affected directly, and don’t even run around spreading panic because they are too busy dealing with the incident itself.

The near misses, Sony’s vendors, suppliers and partners are probably reeling from the near miss and are probably doing all they can to ensure it doesn’t happen to them. in short why are traumatized.

Finally, there is the rest of us. Yeah baby! Another breach, and it wasn’t us! We are invincible! We don’t need to do anything different at all, because we are survivors!

I think I see an issue here. Every time we are not breached, we become more confidant that we will not be breached, and become over confident and convinced we are having the time of our lives doing great stuff in the infosec world and not being breached. let’s hope that bomb doesn’t drop too close to home to burst that bubble, otherwise Careers is So over ceases to be a funny industry joke and very much a reality. Take the precautions now, take the threat seriously, and do what you can now, before it is too late.

I would strongly recommend reading the Book David & Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell if you would like to read more about this concept as well as others along the same lines.

A personal note…

I am now under new employment as a result of an acquisition of my previous employer, and I have been fortunate enough to be elevated to Group CISO of the acquiring company. Unsurprisingly this has resulted in a massive new workload, travel schedule and responsibilities, and hence my distinct lack of posts this last few months. Despite this I have still been nominated for European Personal Security Blog 2015 in this years Blogger Awards; thank you!

Additionally, I am so proud to say that not only is my new employer keen to promote this blog internally in the new company, but also thrilled to say we have become the newest sponsor of the European Security Blogger Network.

Finally, I have been on the road a huge amount the last few weeks, including at RSA USA where I was very happy with my presentation at the RSA Studio; I spoke about how we have changed our approach to security awareness, and the use of the Restricted Intelligence product to catalyse it.

There were also talks at Munich Identity Management Conference, although the talks are not public yet.

Next week, Bsides London, InfoSec Europe, European Blogger Awards and RSA Unplugged. I am mentoring a rookie at Bsides, Speaking at infoSec, as well as at the Tripwire booth, sponsoring (and nominated!) at the Blogger Awards, and just watching at RSA Unplugged.

It’s has been a busy few months!