“We’re in a period of low-tech solutions, and human habits are the best response we have”

The big problem with this war is that it’s invisible. Cybersecurity has rushed to the centre of the stage in 2021, but you have to look for peripheral signs that obliquely point to it. Take my email inbox. A third of the press releases sent to me are rather unsavoury attempts to gain coverage for some security product or service, by claiming that someone else’s disaster could have been averted or better cleaned up if they had bought in to the latest smart security product.

I don’t buy into the premise behind these releases. I’m expected to believe that, by stumbling into a hosting relationship with some marginally competent cloud providers, a global business would be protected by the right security product mix, and that it could then delegate any responsibility for the intrusion, encryption and destruction that would follow from a major attack? Please.

Global businesses can take advice from many sources, spend money in many different ways, rely on radically different types of defence. Unfortunately, they still have to hire and work with human beings. When they parade through the world’s peanut galleries because someone claims to have copies of some of their business data, it’s almost certain that the actions of the workers will have contained the opening through which the bad guys got their prize. The chief information security officer in a big brand-name enterprise won’t be found in the server or