Privacy and Cybersecurity are so boring, let's stop talking about it

Aha, it seems I have your attention. But don't you agree? For most people, privacy and cybersecurity are just boring topics. Even scary, with all the fearmongering and hoodie-pictures being used to represent cybercrime.

Customer centricity and outcome-driven messaging clearly hasn't reached the majority of the cybersecurity world yet. People aren't interested in cybersecurity or privacy, unless they are experts themselves or deal with it in their work lives. Proof is that the majority of companies still perform badly when it comes to a digital security culture. And honestly, I think this is quite logic, as privacy and cybersecurity are the means to higher goals.

People or companies who want to work with you, or with your product or service, want you to be a reliable supplier or partner. And "reliable" from a cyber perspective means:

1) a service or product that is available when they need it, and not disrupted due to a cyber incident;

2) the assurence that using your service or product isn't going to cause a direct or indirect exposure of their confidential information.

So the value propositions of cybersecurity and privacy are resilience and trust.

Why don't we talk about resilience and trust more? That's a positive thing, just like we don't talk about airbags and ABS, but about road safety. My plea is to call privacy and cybersecurity by their outcomes, or by the values they offer. Of course, personally I'll also keep rambling on about cybersecurity and privacy, as I'm part of the 5% who actually finds those topcs interesting. But, I'll be referring to TRUST and RESILIENCE more often.

Will you join me in this?