Here's a quick breakdown of what's to come.
Part I: Foundation
Part I is all about building a foundational understanding of why security culture is a critical, got-to-pay-attention-to-it-now topic. We discuss the current issues with defining “security culture,” offer some hints to an ultimate definition (yeah, you'll have to wait a bit before we spill the beans on that one), and why security culture is a board-level imperative. We'll also provide some tie-ins with Perry's earlier work, Transformational Security Awareness: What Neuroscientists, Storytellers, and Marketers Can Teach Us About Driving Secure Behaviors.
Part II: Exploration
Part II is all about exploration. We focus on giving concrete examples of what a strong security culture looks like and what the consequences of a poor security culture can be. We'll put organizational culture and security culture under a microscope and examine the various subcomponents we find. Along the way, we will throw in some concepts from sociology, organizational culture management, and a few other disciplines. You'll also gain valuable insights from culture experts outside of the cybersecurity domain.
Part 3: Transformation
Here is where the proverbial rubber meets the proverbial road. Part III is about doing the work. It's about transformation. We'll walk you through the Security Culture Framework, a process that Kai developed over 15 years ago for getting a handle on security culture so that it can be improved. Since its creation, this process has been adopted by organizations and governments around the world. And, because anything worth managing is worth measuring, we'll take a deep dive into how to scientifically measure security culture across seven dimensions, and we'll give an overview of the Security Culture Survey, a tool that Kai and his team created over a decade ago. Since that time, it's been honed into a finely tuned scientific instrument that's been used to collect and analyze the largest security-culture-related dataset on earth. We'll also discuss culture-related gotchas, sticking points, and more. In the last bit of Part III, you'll hear from a number of security experts as they discuss security culture, and we'll leave you with some valuable tools and insights that so you can immediately leverage everything from this book. You'll be able to discuss security culture with confidence, measure maturity, gain executive support, and more.
Reader Support for This Book
We've also created a resource site for this book where we'll upload new worksheets, research studies, and other useful security culture-related information. It's at SecurityCultureBook.com.
How to Contact the Publisher
If you believe you've found a mistake in this book, please bring it to our attention. At John Wiley & Sons, we understand how important it is to provide our customers with accurate content, but even with our best efforts an error may occur.
In order to submit your possible errata, please email it to our Customer Service Team at [email protected] with the subject line “Possible Book Errata Submission”.
How to Contact the Authors
We appreciate your input and questions about this book! Connect with Perry or Kai on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/perrycarpenter and www.linkedin.com/in/kairoer.
Part I Foundation
Welcome to the journey! In Part I, we introduce the concept of security culture, why it is important, and (most importantly), the fact that you can measure and improve your culture. There's a lot to cover, so let's get started. But even before you turn to the first page of Chapter 1, we think it's important to give you a definition of security culture.
Security Culture: The ideas, customs, and social behaviors of a group that influence its security.
Chapter 1: You Are Here
Chapter 2: Up-leveling the Conversation: Security Culture Is a Board-level Concern
Chapter 3: The Foundations of Transformation
Chapter 1 You Are Here
The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence—it is to act with yesterday's logic.
Peter Drucker
“Security culture” has become a hot topic of late. If you are a cybersecurity or business leader, you've no doubt seen the term appear in online articles, security presentations, and even a few vendor pitches. It's become a buzzword (or buzz phrase, if you want to be picky) du jour. Unfortunately, most of the time it is little more than a phrase uttered with gravitas, but devoid of real meaning.
Security culture is often confused with security awareness, the implementation of security processes, or even the use of security tools by end users. That initial misidentification becomes even more confusing because each of those things can feed into, or become an artifact of, security culture—but they are not in and of themselves security culture. Security culture is something different, something unique that is undeserving of the confusion that all too often surrounds it. And you know that; otherwise, you wouldn't be reading this book.
Our purpose here is to add precision and clarity to the topic. And, although we could easily fill several hundred pages with great content about security culture, that's not what this book is about. This book, dear reader, is a no-nonsense, (hopefully) no fluff, and (definitely) no BS guide to what security culture is, how to measure it, and how to shape and strengthen it within your organization.
Why All the Buzz?
For decades, security programs focused on diligently deploying technology-based defenses aimed at keeping cybercriminals at bay. The industry focused on firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDSs/IPSs), endpoint protection platforms (EPPs), secure email gateways (SEGs), and more. In truth, the technology has gotten very good. Despite all the focus and spend on security tools, however, the data breach problem is not going away. In fact, it's accelerating faster than the industry can effectively manage via traditional approaches. Figure 1.1 analyzes the amount of money spent on security products since 2007 versus the number of data breaches that occurred each year. The conclusion is clear: The current industry approach is not working.
Figure 1.1 Organizations globally