Weak Links

Conventional wisdom among policymakers in both the US and Europe holds that weak and failing states are the source of the world's most pressing security threats today. However, as this book shows, our assumptions about the threats posed by failed and failing states are based on false premises.

How can our societies be stabilized in a crisis? Why can we enjoy and understand Shakespeare? Why are fruitflies uniform? How do omnivorous eating habits aid our survival? What makes the Mona Lisa’s smile beautiful? How do women keep our social structures intact? – Could there possibly be a single answer to all these questions? This book shows that the statement: "weak links stabilize complex systems" provides the key to understanding each of these intriguing puzzles, and many more besides. The author, a recipient of several distinguished science communication prizes, explains weak or low probability interactions, and uses them as connecting threads in a vast variety of networks from proteins to ecosystems. This unique book and the ideas it develops will have a significant impact on diverse, seemingly unrelated fields of study.

The practical guide to discovering the rules of our superconnected world through the science and sociology of networks. In Superconnect, Richard Koch and Greg Lockwood show that success is less about who you are than how you connect—a chance meeting with an old colleague leads to a swanky new job; two businessmen collaborate online and cofound a successful start-up; a friend introduces a promising entrepreneur to a millionaire looking to invest. But why do these lucky breaks always happen to other people? Personal and professional networks shape everything we do, but simply knowing that they exist won’t help you harness your connections for maximum success. With an eye toward business applications, Superconnect outlines the new rules of our densely linked society. At the core of the analysis are three simple network components—strong relationships, weak relationships, and hubs—that interact in surprising, counterintuitive ways. Understanding how these components mesh, and connecting unrelated people, is the way to achieve in today’s hyper-connected world.

The Code of Federal Regulations is a codification of the general and permanent rules published in the Federal Register by the Executive departments and agencies of the United States Federal Government.

An expert in cybersecurity lays out an evidence-based approach for assessing user cyber risk and achieving organizational cyber resilience. Phishing is the single biggest threat to cybersecurity, persuading even experienced users to click on hyperlinks and attachments in emails that conceal malware. Phishing has been responsible for every major cyber breach, from the infamous Sony hack in 2014 to the 2017 hack of the Democratic National Committee and the more recent Colonial Pipleline breach. The cybersecurity community’s response has been intensive user training (often followed by user blaming), which has proven completely ineffective: the hacks keep coming. In The Weakest Link, cybersecurity expert Arun Vishwanath offers a new, evidence-based approach for detecting and defending against phishing—an approach that doesn’t rely on continual training and retraining but provides a way to diagnose user vulnerability. Vishwanath explains how organizations can build a culture of cyber safety. He presents a Cyber Risk Survey (CRS) to help managers understand which users are at risk and why. Underlying CRS is the Suspicion, Cognition, Automaticity Model (SCAM), which specifies the user thoughts and actions that lead to either deception by or detection of phishing come-ons. He describes in detail how to implement these frameworks, discussing relevant insights from cognitive and behavioral science, and then presents case studies of organizations that have successfully deployed the CRS to achieve cyber resilience. These range from a growing wealth management company with twenty regional offices to a small Pennsylvania nonprofit with forty-five employees. The Weakest Link will revolutionize the way managers approach cyber security, replacing the current one-size-fits-all methodology with a strategy that targets specific user vulnerabilities.