The psychology of security

When we think of information security, we tend to think of sophisticated computing rather than sophisticated psychology. But as Alan Calder, chief executive of IT Governance, told delegates at Infosecurity Europe 2010 this week, you need to sell the idea of information security to company executives by understanding their concerns. Here are two good places to start: firstly, explain to those executives that if their company data is stolen, they could lose an awful lot of money. And secondly, tell them that if they were reckless in allowing that data to be stolen, they could go to prison. You’ve probably got their attention now…