Broken Window Principle

Stefan van de Giessen, General Manager: Cybersecurity at Networks Unlimited Africa Here at Networks Unlimited Africa, we are applying the ‘broken window’ principle when looking at our internal cybersecurity posture and how it affects business processes. The term ‘Broken window’ comes from George Kelling, a criminologist, who wrote in 1982 that, “social psychologists and police officers tend to agree that if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken… vandalism can occur anywhere once communal barriers…are lowered by actions that seem to signal that ‘no one cares’.” This theory had also been the subject of experiments previously (1969) by a professor at Stanford University, Philip Zimbardo.  Zimbardo arranged to have a car w...