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Willful Ignorance as a Security Vulnerability

Willful Ignorance as a Security Vulnerability

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 Saturday evening. Long day of side projects and farm work. The corporate work week was done, but I’d been grinding through accounting, blog writing, development work—all the side-business stuff that fills weekend hours. I was contemplating just getting out of the house for a while. There was snow in the forecast, but maybe I could run out, grab a pizza at the local joint, have a beer, watch whatever game they had on TV, and maybe even interact with other humans for a bit. As I was trying to disconnect from my work brain, I was feeding the dogs and bantering with an AI the way I sometimes do—just to break up the day, have fun, and see where the conversation leads. I think I was talking to it about where I should go eat, the snow in the forecast, and the fact that it wasn’t supposed to start until 9 PM. It was only 5 PM—I had plenty of time to get out, relax, and unwind while I waited for the dogs to come back inside. I tossed out a harmless joke: You know how weather forecasters are. The only job in the world you can be wrong 100% of the time and still keep your job. Just weekend humor. But the AI didn’t let it slide. It pushed back with something like: The weatherman joke is classic, but honestly, they get more grief than they deserve. Still, you’re not wrong—it’s one of the few jobs where being publicly wrong is just part of the gig. Imagine if your farm accounting had that kind of tolerance for error. That made me pause. So I replied: Yeah, and actually the forecast does help me plan… but in my day job running an InfoSec program, if I’m wrong even once? What do you think happens? And right there—in the middle of trying not to think about work—I accidentally tripped into the blog post I didn’t know I was looking for. Willful Ignorance—from my perspective and the 20+ years I’ve been in IT and Security, I’m not sure if anyone has really directly talked about this, but I’ve observed it through behaviors and management practices throughout my career. Willful ignorance is when an organization chooses to avoid information that would force them to take responsibility for risk. It’s not about lacking resources or time—it’s about the deliberate decision to stay uninformed because knowing would create uncomfortable obligations. For those early in their careers, it helps to understand the organizational forces that drive this behavior. Leadership faces competing priorities where security often loses to immediate business needs. Budget constraints create tension when fixing problems costs money upfront. There’s genuine fear of accountability—once you officially know about a risk, you own it. Add in office politics where being the messenger of bad news can hurt your career, and the cognitive discomfort of confronting how vulnerable you really are. Understanding these dynamics helps explain why otherwise smart people make seemingly irrational decisions to avoid security information. The Weatherman Paradox Think about how we treat weather forecasts. Meteorologists are wrong regularly. We joke about it. We expect it. We laugh when they call for sunshine and we get drenched anyway. But we still check the forecast every single day. Even imperfect information helps us plan: We decide what to wear.We adjust outdoor plans.We carry umbrellas “just in case.”We make informed choices even when the information isn’t perfect. We recognize something important: Knowing something—even if it’s uncertain—is more valuable than knowing nothing. That’s the paradox:We accept uncertainty in weather forecasting because we know it still improves outcomes. People choose to know, even when the knowledge might be wrong. This analogy matters because both fields operate in uncertainty—but only one punishes you for being wrong once. The InfoSec Reality: No Room for Error Now flip the analogy to cybersecurity. In InfoSec, being wrong once can be catastrophic.One missed vulnerability? Ransomware.One overlooked misconfiguration? Data theft.One misinterpreted alert? Attackers get weeks of free access. The 2024 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report confirms what we see in the field—exploited vulnerabilities now account for 14% of breaches, nearly triple the rate from 2022.And the math is brutal: Defenders must be right nearly 100% of the time.Attackers only need to succeed once. Industry data shows this repeatedly. The Mandiant M-Trends Report documents how initial footholds frequently come from a single misconfiguration or compromised account, often leading to weeks or months of attacker dwell time.The consequences aren’t “oops, I got caught in the rain.” They’re: Operations shut downMillions lost to recoveryRegulatory finesLawsuits that drag on for yearsReputational damage that haunts an organization for a decade or longer Despite these stakes, I see the same pattern across industry after industry: People choosing not to know. The Dangerous Choice: Willful Ignorance ...
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