Transformational Security Awareness

6What's in a Modern Security Awareness Leader's Toolbox?

We tend to formulate our problems in such a way as to make it seem that the solutions to those problems demand precisely what we already happen to have at hand. With respect to the conduct of inquiry, and especially in behavioral science, I label this effect “the law of the instrument.” The simplest formulation I know of the law of the instrument runs this way: give a small boy a hammer and it will turn out that everything he encounters needs pounding.

Abraham Kaplan¹

Well, here we are. We've spent the last three chapters together walking through multiple disciplines related to how humans think, understand, make decisions, and influence each other in groups. You appreciate that working against human nature is a recipe for failure, and you know that information alone is of little help in forming beliefs, shaping values, or driving desired behaviors.

Now that we have established a base-level understanding of the disciplines outlined in Chapters 3 through 5, and how they intersect with our goal of driving secure behaviors, let's take a look at some of the tools and methods that you have in your toolbox. I'm sure that you'll recognize most (if not all) of the tools that I mention here. Many of them are tools already used in traditional, ineffective security awareness campaigns. But, as the saying goes, “It's not about the tools. It's about how you use them.” And our goal is to use our tools as precision instruments, smartly ...