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I don't want my users to be clueless. I want them to better understand the technical systems they use every day so they can employ them more effectively. But th

I don't want my users to be clueless. I want them to better understand the technical systems they use every day so they can employ them more effectively. But they and I have a job as well. When I was in tech support, I spent hours some weeks with one particular user working on her software and teaching her more effective use of her computer. But I could only do that during slow weeks: I didn't have enough time to do that every week, and I certainly couldn't do it for everyone in the building. If we'd wanted to teach the whole building how to use computers, we would've needed probably a good quarter of the employees teaching other employees, during which time those employees under training wouldn't've been able to perform the work they were hired to do. We tried making documentation for users to read, but while you can lead a horse to water, you can't make him drink. But ultimately, while I always wanted people to take training courses in computer use, I still implemented security measures, because I knew that people were at the company to work, not to take training courses. I want security measures in place for the same reason I want computers in the first place: so that I can let the computer worry about it for me. I don't want to have phishing awareness campaigns when I can just make the spam filter more effective. I don't want to tech people not to click the flashing greed download button when I can just roll out an ad blocker across the entire organization. I don't want to send an emergency email blast to my coworkers telling them not to download TOTALLY_NOT_A_VIRUS.PDF.EXE from the chain email going around and keep one step ahead of the mixture of malice and idiocy out there when I can just set up a system to scan email attachments for viruses in the first place. Yes, I want a more informed and educated workplace, and I worked to make that happen, but I want computers to work for me and do the hard part for me as well

nonrandomstring 4y ago
Sounds like you're a good sysadmin and mentor. There's no possible way you should have to take on the burden of schooling everyone. You probably already go far beyond the call of duty. What we need to do with Digital Self Defence is raise awareness of civic cyber-security needs from school ages 5 upwards (My government in the UK have started on this project). We also need to screen for digital literacy.
- exitheone 4y ago
  I admire your positive view on people but I feel like you vastly overestimates both the ability to learn and the willingness to care of a huge chunk of the population. If we talk about corporate environments with hundreds of thousands of employees, you will absolutely always have malicious or drunk or just plain uncaring people that will not care at all what happens when they click that one blinking link in that one special email from the long lost relative. The goal to teach people how technology works is admirable and necessary, but it is no defence against a motivated attacker. The attackers will always have a massive information advantage just because they have so much more time to aquire it.

nonrandomstring 4y ago

Sounds like you're a good sysadmin and mentor. There's no possible way you should have to take on the burden of schooling everyone. You probably already go far beyond the call of duty. What we need to do with Digital Self Defence is raise awareness of civic cyber-security needs from school ages 5 upwards (My government in the UK have started on this project). We also need to screen for digital literacy.

exitheone 4y ago
I admire your positive view on people but I feel like you vastly overestimates both the ability to learn and the willingness to care of a huge chunk of the population. If we talk about corporate environments with hundreds of thousands of employees, you will absolutely always have malicious or drunk or just plain uncaring people that will not care at all what happens when they click that one blinking link in that one special email from the long lost relative. The goal to teach people how technology works is admirable and necessary, but it is no defence against a motivated attacker. The attackers will always have a massive information advantage just because they have so much more time to aquire it.