Cybersecurity Week 2022

The biggest vulnerability is always the human element.

It’s a truism in the security world, but we rarely dwell on what it means. You can patch a software flaw completely, but there’s no perfect fix for an accounts payable clerk who approves a phony invoice or an executive who falls for a spear-phishing attack. Human beings are complex, and keeping them safe is even more complex. It’s the hardest problem in security — in a sense, it’s the only problem.

So for the next two weeks, we’re taking a look at some cybersecurity stories with the human element at the center, like scammers dangling bogus job offers. These difficult situations are at the heart of the simpler cybersecurity problems we tackle every day, like how to keep your device secure and your messages private. But seen from this angle, we can see how maddening they really are.