Pain of staying the same > Pain of change = Change

2013: Awareness — Snowden educates the masses that hacking “is a real thing”.

2014: Relevance — 60% of the credit-card carrying population of the United States has their card replaced at least once because of cardholder data theft.

2015: Pain — Ashley Madison results in the first widely known cases of suicide directly resulting from cybercrime, and attacker attention turns to digital assets that cannot be insured.

2016… Change?

A good friend and mentor of mine had a saying:

“Once, and only once, the pain of staying the same exceeds the pain of change — that’s when people change”.

Cybersecurity has long been a challenge lead from the top down, but as heat increases in the consumer market and hacking becomes dinner-table conversation at non-geek dinner-tables, I wonder if this will be the year where cybersecurity can finally, and rightfully, become a conversation that’s driven bottom up?