Locks, SOCs and a cat in a box: What Schrödinger can teach us about cybersecurity

I recently had, what I thought, was a unique brainwave. (Spoiler alert: it wasn’t, but please read on!)

As a marketing leader at ESET UK, part of my role is to communicate how our powerful and comprehensive solutions can be implemented to protect organisations, in a way that helps clarify the case for upgrading to higher levels of cybersecurity. And that need for clarity is now more urgent than ever.

Cybersecurity leaders and agencies, including the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), are often quoted as saying that cyberattacks are not “a matter of if, but when.” So perhaps it’s not too much of a stretch to describe every organisation as existing in a “pre-breach state”, or a condition where threats may already be present but stay under the radar.

Which brings to mind Schrödinger’s cat, the famous thought experiment where a cat in a sealed ...