It’s been five years since the IBM “Cyber Security Intelligence Index” report found that “over 95 percent of all incidents investigated recognize ‘human error’ as a contributing factor.” Yet, despite millions of dollars spent on technology and training, the “human factor” is still the number one security issue businesses face.

IBM’s “X-Force Threat Intelligence Index 2018” report states that employee negligence led to exposure of more than 2 billion records in 2017 and costs from data breaches doubled over the previous year.

“If you think about cyber attack, it’s a human being attacking another human being with a bunch of technology in the middle,” said Masha Sedova (pictured), co-founder and chief product officer of Elevate Security Inc. “If we keep solving it with just technology, we’re going to keep ending up making the same mistakes we have been making for decades. What it would look like if people wanted to do security instead of had to? What it would look like if people were champions for security, and not because we made them do it, but because each of us were invested in it?”

Sedova spoke with Lisa Martin (@LisaMartinTV), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the CloudNOW “Top Women in Cloud” Innovation Awards event in Menlo Park, California. They discussed how viewing cybersecurity from a human angle brings new insights to solving security problems.

Making security fun

Computer security was Sedova’s focus from a young age, and she describes herself as having “grown up in the field.” While she was familiar with the saying that “the human is the weakest link,” unlike most other experts she was convinced that there was a way to change human behavior and make the link strong.

“So, I took a step back from my computer science and computer security background and dove into the field of behavioral science, positive psychology, and game design. I started exploring how people think and how we make decisions to see if I can start applying that to security,” she said.

Elevate Security’s approach to cybersecurity is to encourage best security practices through gamification, insight and rewards. While results are now proven, convincing venture capitalists to support such a low-tech attitude to a high-stakes problem took tenacity.

“Know your stuff and stand up behind it; know that you have experience and an idea or a brand that brings something to the table,” she said. “Just because several venture capitalists might say no, it doesn’t mean that your idea is not worth fighting for.”

Diversity is key to Sedova’s vision for Elevate Security. “From the very beginning we believed that embracing our diversity would be a significant differentiator and not just the way we hire, but also the way we build our product,” she stated.

The results speak for themselves: Elevate has a workforce that is 50 percent female, including equal numbers of women and men in the engineering team, and a 100 percent female outside board of directors.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the CloudNOW “Top Women in Cloud” Innovation Awards event.

Photo: SiliconANGLE