COMMENTARY
Once a niche craft spurred by the digital revolution, cyberattacks have exploded into the biggest threat to businesses today. Despite the significant consequences of a security breach, including increased liability and growing government regulation, organizations continue to fail to stop attackers. From the outside looking in, it would seem logical to conclude that all efforts would be made to secure our digital infrastructure. Yet, we find the opposite to be true. Many organizations continue to put off adopting modern processes, best practices, and critical tooling. But why?
The simple truth is that there is a motivational deficit when it comes to implementing effective measures. This shouldn’t be all that surprising, though. Human beings are genetically predisposed to procrastination — a tendency well-documented in both psychological and behavioral economic research.
This predisposition, often called temporal discounting, explains why people delay important tasks that…