Safety Culture in the News

Safety Culture in the News

Black Hat Europe: Hackers Need to Educate Policymakers

Black Hat Europe: Hackers Need to Educate Policymakers

Governments are increasingly calling on security researchers and the academic hacking community to improve the state of cybersecurity by better informing policymakers. And businesses must do more to foster a “safety culture” in which input from security teams gets translated into ongoing problem-solving.

… Learn From Aviation’s Safety Culture Cooper also spoke from the perspective of his having served as a U.K. Royal Air Force pilot flying Tornado fighter aircraft. Subsequently, he became an air force safety officer in charge of creating an engaged “reporting culture” in which individuals felt comfortable enough to “readily report problems, errors and near misses” so the organization could target the underlying problems.

“Aviation had really huge accident rates until the sector really started digging into the culture and understanding of what was causing those accidents - and it absolutely transformed safety,” he said.

Many organizations, however, are not set up to foster the required levels of input and action from their cybersecurity teams. “Really, the final keystone of that culture is a questioning culture, empowering individuals to speak up if they see risks, mitigations or opportunities,” he said. “And if they think something isn’t right, even if they don’t know the solution, it’s really important to hear their voice.”