The Safety Law Of An Idiot Next To You

hi oh thanks for coming over here it's great to see all of you as you can see I've been completely barricaded so I can't move No Escape plan for me um so I'm going to quickly introduce myself so my name is t vard I'm an agile coach and EXA startups consultant I'm also an award- winning designer and an ambass for women iners technologist and a lead for women who code when it comes to cyber security what do I sub security have in common well over 70 years of working in information Securities with all state as a project manager so I work with people so naturally I am interested in the human factor and creative techologies as well when I say the human

factor I mean all aspects of our Behavior decision making communication that affects our daily lives um whether it's work relationship especially work um also into wording a lot and a lot of reading lots of books as you will see in this presentation and here is a Cod my LinkedIn page if you'd like to stay connected so today I want to ask you a question please raise your hand if you trust your intuition there's some delay at the back okay so good to see there are people who TR intuition I wonder if those who did not raise their hand have a thought is it good thing or bad thing so um let's get back to that question

later another question how well do you trust does it help you in your life situations at work in relationship on the road when I was learning to drive my driving instructor William used to tell me that my safety on the roads was in the hands of the last idiot driving next to me although he used the word egy so of course we'll have control over our lives reaction from Behavior but what he meant is that I should never overestimate what I know about the world uh the world of what I see on the road and never underestimate the um the role of chance the role of uncertainty and the irrationality of human behavior he actually demanded that I pay attention

to what I don't know and never never ignore the likelihood of the most ridiculous scenario happening perhaps not as ridiculous as space one but how about a car suddenly changing lanes right in front of you without having a light indicator or forcing you to hit the brakes has happened um maybe you were the one driving but I'm sure some of you can predict such behavior before it happens somehow you know who's going to be that e on the road and who's going to behave this way so you can prepare in advance you think about driving the more experienced the driver the more driving is done without thinking think about it when you drive your kids to uh school when you go to

work or shopping and if you think back about your trip most likely you're not going to remember much and you're not going to remember how you did it that's because the more experience we get the more skill is built into our intutive system and we drive on autopilot we don't think about it it becomes easy and intuitive but what happens if you come across a situation we don't recognize something new for example driving in the night um at night time in a PO or drive in a new city think about it we suddenly become alert and Vigilant we focus on what we don't know we sharpen our attention and start searching for all the signs of what

might happen because we expect the high likelihood of an accident of something unexpected taking place and this is called aware driving here I'm going to ask you another question so who do you think is a better driver an intuitive driver or the Weare driver the we driver I'll in lety so these are the stats for Road accidents contributing practice in the UK 2020 I know you come it so I'm going to read you the top um the most contributed Parts about 40% driver failed to look properly second contributing factor about 20% driver failed to judge other person's path for Speed third one driver careless Reckless or in a hurry and the list goes on most of these reasons are

associated with um eras of judgment and PR attention so this shows that our alliance on intuition is not always a good thing I want to comes to cyber security there is no exception this is the IBM security intelligence report for 2021 and they found that in 95% because of cyber security breach was that means that if the human factor was mitigated only one out of 20 breaches would take place only one out of so here's a question when does TR in our intuition is the thing and when does it lead to so to make it a bit interesting I'm going to share my story with you and to give an example so last year I have I

had a team of people working on a new Ecommerce website my personal project and we used week's editor where I have another website current website is all my C information and about night time we started testing new subscribers and membership forms so every day I was getting tons of notifications about new subscribers being added so one Sunday morning because only people who own business work on Sunday mornings I got another notification um there was nothing wrong about this one if that happened to any other day I would not pay much attention to it but that morning something so I had a look at it and what I found was quite interesting the subscribers email um the registration

email addresses with that maybe checked some other information on the website within my edit page and I found that the subscriber somehow also edit himself as a site member um to my website getting access to my admin page byp passing my sign up protocol approval form I didn't receive that notification and there were four more other site members who just inv invited themselves to my website without my permission so the first thing I did I reached out to the project manager to see if that was a part of that test of course it was not because people don't work on Sundays right so at this point I panicked my adrenaline in my blood just went through the RO I was sweating

because my website I have customer information I have emails names addresses I have my bank dets my credit cards all linked to payments is the website and I had my copyright I dealt with CES before it's a very painful process so at this moment I I just absolutely panicked what do you do I can't see the IP address I didn't know what's happening I didn't know it's just one off or is going to repat so then my logical mind keeps in and I started taking action well first screenshots take note of the time when it happens um take screenshots of all the credentials and details that block fake emails remove our site members and send a

report to security and I set an Al to check my notifications every hour and I was all good until next morning when I got 15 new site members just invited themselves my um website admin page and so we continued I was blocking moving taking screenshots sending daily reports wgs um which is super important as well um next day I would say 15 20 25 at some point I was several thousands of prils um I must say the guy the girl they were really creative so here's an example of that creativity I don't know if you can see this but that day all emails the topic was casos and every day was a different topic so someone was really having fun

that all of the they abely ridiculous Mumble Jumers and you can see they were automated they were Al generated what I also observed most of the attacks happened in the morning time but not at the same time it was a lance and not every day and there was this exponential nature to our relationship that at some point even made me think that wasn't really automated that might be some manual element um so finally after my daily reports to weeks replied with this email please be assured that this is simply automated F and your website and account and safe and secure we're currently investigating V and working alongside our security and development team to stop the fake side members from being

edited this did not come me down I was worried and I was worried a lot and the reason for this in 2020 Interpol cyber security report revealed that the top cyber security attack for was spam messages just in the first four months of 2020 there were over 900,000 spam messages that resulted in theft of information money extortion sometimes just for fun but you know what it might have been for fun but as a small business owner the last thing I really wanted to say is my business name a pair or SP messages possibly even sent to my clients when you buil your business and your business reputation over years was blood and spat and lots

of money and lots of eff the last thing you want is to see one EDI ruin it all in one day and this is a very scary thought so I didn't agree with this and I didn't want to take chances um so I thought what else can I do for my end right so I reached out to clients of mine who quite have good relationships and I asked them to M to their emails uh whatever comes out just see if something happens I notified all clients and subscribers um who I had that like um whose details I had on the website because they have the right to know I notified my bands um for all the

cards that were on my website and I removed most of the card details from the website as well I checked my security features and enable those that were missing and I also enabled to authentication for access to my uh we page for out I was was too so yeah you need to have to comption everywhere and at this point I was really happy that I had my business of professional Indemnity insurance I cannot understand how important it is because you really don't value it until it happens and it can happen to anyone anytime with a simple spam message um at this point it was about a week since the first aniz sign happens those attack attacks stopped and I

really want to think that was weeks who fixed this vulnerability but I also know that other wi users experienced this issues throughout entire 2020 2022 and an interesting fact a few weeks after that someone tried to make payments and signing Cod for me using my credit card I had this credit card website you know that's the thing so it might have been just for fun it might have been just a n p ATT someone was trying to get access to my or customer information who knows but in business just like in driving you don't want to take chanes and going back to the topic of intuition it was my intuition and a bit of Lu because I actually made do work to

check my notifications since Sunday morning that helped me spot the attack but it was my vigilance that helped me deal with it you see that's the thing we actually drive better when we are aware what we don't know when we the unexpected so but we also know that in this case intution was a good thing I followed through on it but it doesn't always work so what makes our intuition back fire sometimes right if we want to be better drivers we need to know those factors so let's look at what intuition is so hbert Simon who started Chess Masters and their claims and their behavior claims that intuition is nothing more and nothing less than

recognition that's recognition done by our intuitive automated thinking system using the knowledge about the world that we already have to quickly assess the situation and produce that quick and easy decision we just get the final output quick and easy one so here I'm going to I want you to do this see that one so I'm going to give you a quick um test just to test how fast how quick your intuition is so I'm going to show you that um a simple math task um just Beau do not try to solve it but just listen to your mind and listen to the first answer that c your mind the first second what you don't need to so

here it

is and you will get the first answer in response come to mind quick and easy because this is an easy puzzle um some of you might get an answer that they have right so this is quick puzzle it calls for intuitive response quick and one because if you do the math you will see that if a bow costs 10 P then the total time is going to be1 and 12 the right answer is five some of you who got the right answer also had this quick tany thought it's intuitive it comes to everyone's mind but somehow you resisted it and that's a good thing think about it what help you resist in your thought um this

10 P response is what scientists call um a thought illusion a cognitive illusion and the thing about them is no one is immune to them we even the best of possible them if you got the answer on don't worry so did I when I came across this task and actually so did over 50% of Harvard Princeton and MIT University students that's the thing about cognitive rels we all suffer from them so going back to intuition then if intuition is recognition based on our knowledge about the world and we know that our knowledge is limited we simply don't know everything right then intuition oh sorry mixed up sorry so then intuition is something that tells you to check your

facts right the 10se in is intuitive and some of you have overc comments when your aware driver kicks in and tells you please check your P it's not F something is not adding up here so why do we fall for these soluions right why does it happen why do we suff them so first thing it's easy you see we all rely on this intuitive optimate driving because it saves US Energy mental energy and actually physical energy this is how we work 95% of our thinking is done intuitively without our conscious aware thought we allely it it's in our nature and it is linked to the concept of the law of least effort that's what psychologist suggest the idea is that

when there are several ways of achieving a s goal people will eventually prate to the least demanding one in other words scientists claim that laziness is built in our nature this is how our minds and bodies work and that's why it gets so hard to overcome those thoughts or cognitive lesions Factor number two we suffer from over confidence very often we overestimate what we know and underestimate what we don't know this is called the illusion of knowing and it is linked to another cognitive bias called the bias of certainty the think about it is when we strongly believe a certain conclusion is true our minds will keep looking for the evidence that supports this conclusion even if the evidence is

unsound in other words we create the cognitive state of desired certainty at the EXP exp of Truth and that leads us to another cognitive illusion the illusion of control we think we're in control because we think we know what we need to know about the world because we have this sense of certainty that we have created for ourselves so that we can go around the world comfortably I know what I'm doing have you heard that very often it's said just before a disaster is going to happen so if you go back to what intuition is again I'm going to remind about this lot if it is our intuitive automated system response um to the situation which uses

the knowledge we already have about the world then it's just a signal that to check the facts take action and verify your facts mindfully and it is when we start ignoring the signal or fail to take action fail to do for the MTH is when accidents happen so let's try and formulate the safety law of needed right so we have established that it's over confidence what we think we know about the world and low mental e effort our Reliance on those easy lazy thinking that leads to accidents then the the safety law is going to be awareness about everything done there the unexpected awareness about that driver Egypt driver on the road somewh driving next to you right

now that you don't know about plus Focus mental effort and ability to quickly speech from intuitive autopilot driving thinking to focus man e thinking that what makes us better drivers so this is all good right but no one can maintain focused mental effort throughout the day 207 because this is really difficult you know that if you're working on a certain report analyzing data 45 minutes and break I'm exhausted um sportting abnormalities they unusual requires this mental effort and it is difficult attention is difficult right so if we talk about attention being better drivers we need to know the factors that deplete our attention um here is an interesting fact our nervous system consumes more glucose than many other

parts of our body and some studies showed that demanding cognitive tasks especially those that invol some form of self-control can be as exhausting and gluc mening as draun in a spring so what are the factors that can deplete our attention and can make a switch from aware driving to autopilot driving first time any task where you need to think quickly and fast under pressure is very mentally demanded one of the hardest next I don't know if you can see that switching between mentally demanding cognitive tasks especially under time pressure or doing more than than one such task at time in other words multitasking so yes scientists claim that we are not bailed for multitasking in fact when we start multitasking we

lose our Focus um another question has anyone heard of The Invisible Gorilla experiment so okay I'm going to show you so two um scientists from Harvard University decided to test the effect of mentally demanding cognitive tasks on our attention so they made a video of six people passing a ball dynamically three people in white shirts and three people in black shirts and they asked the audience to silently count the number of faets so imagine that you're sitting on the audience a need to count those faet between the two teams and they're very quick and rapid and in the middle of the video a man dressed as a gorilla walks in and stays on screen for

9 seconds do you think you would see the G men over 50% of the audience did not see the man they completely missed that they couldn't believe they didn't see the man and that's the thing that's what cognitive biases and Illusions do to our minds we can practically spare at things um just be blind they practically make us blind as the scientists WR it on their website and you can Google it the videos um on their website it's very easy to find we are missing a lot of what goes on around us and we have no idea that we are missing so so much so next um in terms ofing tasks all tasks that require a form of

self-control and here's an interesting thing suppressing of a feelings and emotions is mentally demanding task that may may make your mind stre from aware driving to alter pilot driving examples respond nicely to someone that behavior or as Ro bu studed show pleasing other people in fact that study showed that pleasing people is very mentally demanding task so if you're trying to solve a puzzle or prepare your report or solve a problem report and you are attending to the needs of your loved ones or your colleagues at the same time you're not doing a good job your attention will be depleted your mental energy will be depleted any um avoiding difficult thoughts or any thoughts that bother us

where we have this internal conflict will the mental energy and your ability to think clearly and logically and as you can see with every mentally demanded cognitive thoughts our ability to see clearly and logically DEET and that's natural next p physical emotional perceived and mental as a matter of fact a few dreams will have the same effect on your mind as sleeping night and in ch that hunger low glucose blood levels again our nerv system and our minds need glucose so that we can think clearly sharply and maintain the focus so here I'm going to ask you to do another puzzle um so I'm going to show this is a simple puzzle quick one but

listen to your intuition again the answers that come to your mind first and second how many animals of each kind did Moses take into the now some of you might be thinking okay Al giraff then you remember oh it's actually to of right wrong because mosses did not take any animals to the it was Noah so this is a very simple intuitive puzzle which is called the MOs solusion which introduces a familiar idea right animals being taken into the OR sets is Biblical context and Moses Is Not Unusual to this context he's not abnormal yet it is an abnormality but here's the thing remember that intuition is recognition so our mind naturally searches for information we already know for what we

recognize and first of all reacts to that that Contex ignoring the S the abnormalities so next item is familiarity and this one is deeply wired in our and Minds this is how we walked you know but hundreds of thousands of years ago when we come across something new and it doesn't kill us so we label it a safe the more often we come across it and the safe of it feels so we know like ah okay so it's good familiarity creates a cognitive sense of comfort and ease in our minds which is very difficult to differentiate from truth I'm going to say it again we are not build to recognize and differentiate between familiar and the

[Music] truth think about it next one you're not going to like it good mood um or what the scientists call optimism bias uh studies actually show that when we in a good mood we are in our comfort zone familiarity with sin we are better tuned with our intuition and creativity but our ability to solve puzles to perform analytical statistical analysis tasks declines and vice versa if we are in a bad mood then we get disconnected from our intuition and creativity but we get we become much more Vigilant so we become much better at analyzing things and detecting abnormalities and fertilities not good news but this how this is how things are so all of these

things will deplete your tension they will deplete your ability to think clearly logically and detect abnormality and the thing is all of these are effectively used in social engineering and manipulation whether it is to pray on your sense of comfort and trust or um or your sense of stress and your fatigue or perhaps by putting you in a time pressure conflicting decision situation which is which happens very often so there are a lot of people who will use this to manipulate you to make the decisions you don't want want to make and it's very important to understand this factors and it's good to know this but then again what can we do right how can we cope with this how can

we become back drivers being aware of this first and foremost our brains Minds bodies need frent rest and balanc eating died glucose the key word is balanced to much glucose consumed to fast results leads to energy spikes which lead to Rapid energy decline it's not doing you anything good um on this topic want to mention there was a study conducted um with two PE groups of people working on cognitive tasks and one of them had a drink with glucose sugar and another group had a drink with a sweetener the group that had a drink with glucose actually Sugar performed much better on their fall task because they were able to overcome these energy depletion effects sweetness do not not give us

energy unfortunately for those who on the diet this have bad news but sugar makes us better thinkers again in balanced play positive in sensus another study I G by Rory Bo group showed that when people had a strong incentive they were able to overcome the energy depletion attention depletion ago um ago depletion effects so motivation is a powerful thing and these are not just works our minds need it we do better when we are positively motivated practice recognizing those situations where we're most likely to switch from aware driving to intuitive automated easy quick lazy thinking driving when you start practicing those you will start noticing the stations when you are more vulnerable and that gives you the edge um any practice any

skill just like was driving takes time so start now if you want to improve your intuition next one just learn to use both there is a reason why 95% of our time use our automated thinking system because it saves energy and because it gives us those important insights intuitive signals so it's important to learn how to do both delegates solving some problems to your intuitive thinking system productively but also verify check check the facts mindfully and train your attention training your attention Le to training um intuition and here is a little incentive for you scientists found that improv attention links to improved intelligence and in fact training attention improved cognitive control and our ability to think logically for

longer resisting distractions but that comes with practice so going back to my story with my website um on the spam messages subscribers attack what helped me spot this attack while my did not well first of all I was rested it was Sunday morning I had no destructions second I had a strong incentive it's my website my business my reputation at stake third I followed on my intuition hunch that suggested to me quicker than I realized that people don't work in songers and that that subscriber's email address looked slightly odly different from all test emails that I saw and I took action I had plans that Sunday morning but I put them on a hold and I started

investigating I overcome that familiarity um bias to look into things because I didn't want to trust the lazyy thinking system being in a good morning on Sunday morning saying ah I will check it later because I have plans so cognitive biases are built in us they are in our nature they are our buil-in vulnerability and there is nothing we can do about it but just be aware and practice recognition and practice given better at our intuition and attention here is a famous Muer Lear illusion we all know the two lines are equal but you still see them different and that's the think as Daniel kman the Nobel priz winner said we can't unsee the illusion but we

can train our minds to recognize it and just as the case with the idiot on the road we cannot be responsible for every edad out there but we can reduce number of accidents by training our attention training our intuition by training our ability to quickly and productively speech from autopilot to aware Focus thinking mode um and that's all thank you for your

attention okay with time for a few questions here before we break up so T thank you very much for that very thoughtful hope my attention's not too much DEET it but great thank you very much hope you enjoyed [Music] this yes you works you had the similar ability yeah um the thing is at the moment there is no other website that would have relability and there's a thing about iMed driving on the road we don't know when it's going to happen when a t attack is going to happen when someone is going to do something that will put our lives businesses reputations at stake all you can do is be vigilant continuously check whether another website gets much better

to security and switch quickly can you transfer all of your data all of your coroporate to another website quickly without losing it yes every day that was the point and I think that's why I got it result so quickly within a week I was sending reports every day result all screenshots notes timing I wasn't taking it LLY thanks for

question so that's hard to say we said they don't but then again um the fact that my card was hacked and used in California just a few weeks after that um so that was and the OD to happen and I believe no um [Music]

coinci any more questions from the floor folks I have a question actually did anyone get the five be spawns straight away was the task no everyone had did you have one but did you get the T first and then they were like oh hold on a sec something just added up um all right okay ah you know the puzzle okay that doesn't count yeah but that's the thing exactly yeah you know it's illusion so you can recognize it that's a think about recognition practice Yeah but you still see it as different that you can't do anything about it that's the thing with um cognitive biases and Illusions you will feel it you will still feel it every

time is just overcoming it that building up this resistance to pause and say hold on a sec I'm switching my driving Ro okay big round of applause for Tanya please thank you very much thank you guys