Science, Skepticism and Security
Rich Mogull has a great post on “Science, Skepticism and Security”
In the security industry we never lack for theories or statistics, but very few of them are based on sound scientific principles, and often they cannot withstand scientific scrutiny. For example, the historic claim that 70% of security attacks were from the “insider threat” never had any rigorous backing. That claim was a munged up “fact” based on the free headline from a severely flawed survey (the CSI/FBI report), and an informal statement from one of my former coworkers made years earlier. It seems every day I see some new numbers about how many systems are infected with malware, how many dollars are lost due to the latest cybercrime (or people browsing ESPN during lunch), and so on.
Worth pondering on a Friday.