S36 Ep27: Emily Holyoake - Beyond Infrastructure: The Case for Putting People First

Today’s episode might sound a little bit different, but it’s a really important conversation. Steve sits down with Emily Holyoake, co-founder of Not A Standard and the brain behind the FRAME Network, to talk about the human harm of cyber attacks, gender-based violence, tech-facilitated abuse, and diversity in the cybersecurity industry. Steve also asks Emily to envision the future of the cyber workforce, one that creates safety for society and people, not just machines and data.

Key Takeaways:

1. Every attack begins and ends with a human and a breach can have an existential impact on people’s lives.
2. Attribution too often is aimed at individual humans, when we should look at the systems that enabled the person to cause the harm.
3. Diversity within your teams enables a richer environment for problem-solving.

Tune in to hear more about:

1. The SAFE Framework (1:57)
2. Why Emily pen-tests her personal life – and why you should, too (18:44)
3. Building a cyber workforce for a safer society (20:56)

Standout Quotes:

1. “A person clicks on a phishing link that results in a breach. So we blame the individual instead of thinking what did the system, literally or figuratively, allow to happen that meant that person clicked on that link? But we think we've got to find the root cause. So we pick a human rather than thinking about what the system enabled.” - Emily Holyoake
2. “Every attack begins and ends with a human, fundamentally. In security, we talk so often about people being the weakest link. Fair enough, right? You can have all the technical controls in the world and it just takes one person to break that. But we wouldn't have this business, we wouldn't have this culture, we wouldn't have anything without these people. And so people are, if anything, our greatest asset.” - Emily Holyoake
3. “When you have a diverse group of people thinking about the same problem in different ways from different backgrounds, different experiences, you're going to get an infinitely richer understanding or solution to a problem.” - Emily Holyoake

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From the Information Security Forum, the leading authority on cyber, information security, and risk management.