It’s all too common to see “fear appeals” used to motivate users to keep their guards up against the vast amount of cybercriminal activity that occurs online daily. The term FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) was originally coined in the 1970s in reference to IBM’s marketing technique of spreading scary rumors about a competitor’s new product. Ever since, it’s been a mainstay used by security practitioners to try to win budget and to scare employees into following the rules laid down by IT. As cybersecurity research Karen Renaud put it in a recent Wall Street Journal piece, “Companies often turn to a powerful emotion to get employees to be vigilant about cybersecurity. They scare them.”
