Silicon Prairie Cyber Services' Blog

  Three reasons people are like operating systems: People and operating systems both: Process Information Store Information Transfer Information Three reasons people are not like operating systems: Technology is predictable and always acts the same. People are not predictable, and their behavior can surprise you. People are adaptable. With that in mind, would you pick a person or an operating system as your last line of defense against a cyber attack? I would pick the human every time! It's adaptability for the win! You see, technology has to be programmed and told what to do, and even machine learning can only take you so far today. If that threat or phishing email is new or slightly different than what you're expecting, your tech might miss it. However, when you give people the proper training, they can figure out that something is phishy even if it's not the same as what you showed them in training. Humans are used to adapting because our world is constantly changing.

It's time for some sayings to go. It's time to kick "You can't patch stupid" to the curb.   I've heard this saying ever since I've been in IT, and it's said in cyber too. A user would do something wrong, and someone in the department would remark, well, you can't patch stupid. I'm guilty of saying it myself, to be honest with you. Now, I've never said it directly to someone, but I'm sure someone heard one of us say, you can't patch stupid at some point somewhere along the line. I guess it's because we're a grouchy and calloused group in the IT field, but it's not cool, and we need to stop saying it.   I don't talk about feelings often living in a tech world, but imagine how someone would feel if they heard that? Pretty crappy. Would they believe that you're for the human? Would they think you care about providing quality solutions to make their jobs simple and more secure? Would they think that cybersecur