We All Have Been the “Stupid User” at Some Point with Dr. Margaret Cunningham

Human-Centered Security

Dr. Margaret Cunningham is an experimental psychologist and the Principal Research Scientist for Human Behavior at Forcepoint’s X-Lab. In this role, she serves as the behavioral science subject matter expert in an interdisciplinary security team driving the development of human-centric security solutions. Previously, she supported the Human Systems Integration branch of The Department of Homeland Security.

In this episode, we talk about:

• Why saying “people are the weakest link” is not a productive mindset when it comes to cybersecurity.
• How we can thoughtfully create systems/designs that mitigate the risk of human limitations.
• The Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (whether you are in UX or cybersecurity, you will likely find this framework interesting).
• The nuances around errors and rulebreaking and how we can, ideally, learn from our employees’ behavior to make the systems and the organization better.