Cyber Security
Neurodiversity in Cybersecurity skillsets
C By Dr. Astha Keshariya
ybersecurity is rather loosely used term with varying subjective definitions due to the different dimension of understandings and work experiences. In 2014 “Technology Innovation Management Review”, examined the multidimensionality of the cybersecurity spread across separate disciplines and different technical views and defined it as -“Cybersecurity is the organization and collection of resources, processes, and structures used to protect cyberspace and cyberspace-enabled systems from occurrences that misalign de jure from de facto property rights.”, by Dan Craigen, Nadia Diakun-Thibault, Randy Purse. It is this multidimensional aspect of cybersecurity that obscures resolution to some of the complex cybersecurity challenges.
What is Neurodiversity? Neurodiversity is described as a huge range of variations in neurocognitive functions of the brain and the behavioural traits in humans, like, information processing styles, differences in perspective & viewpoints, ways of thinking, and other cognitive abilities. On the other hand, neurotypicals usually behaves the way society expects of them. It does not refer to neurological deficit or any
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mental health condition, mental health problems can affect neurotypical and neurodivergent brains in the same way. Neurotypical may find a constantly evolving cyberthreat landscape stressful and burdening situation to deal with while, neurodiverse individuals may show functional impulsivity and a desire to explore unchartered terrain, ready to take on calculated risks. No matter whatever would have been the cause of classical or operant conditioning, neurodivergent individual seem to choose a distinctive modus operandi, and are stimulated when tackling uncertain terrain. They show profound cognitive abilities to think out-of-the-box, pattern recognition, knowledge proc essing, idea generation, problem solving and innovation which is a competitive advantage. It’s a well-known fact that cyberattacks or security breach have the potential to pose systemic risk by disrupting the business operations, thus demands highstakes of attention when dealing with it. Consequently, operational resiliency includes the overall resiliency of the system beyond the technology risks encompassing the underpinning operations, infrastructure, data (including crown jewels), and services of digital technologies.
