The Red Queen Effect Feedback Loop

It is more academic style to start the article/lecture with a definition, but for this case such approach will be the most straight forward.  Reading Bruce Schneier’s blog and book ( Liars & Outliers - How does society function when you can’t trust everyone? ) I am constantly finding great thoughts, conclusions, theories – and one of them I would like to comment, share my opinion. Bruce is widely known security pro – especially in the hard core mathematic and cryptography  - but is interesting writer, and shares his opinion about the evolution and the problem of trust in security itself.

Firstly, what is Red Queen Effect?

The Red Queen hypothesis, also referred to as Red Queen's, Red Queen's race or The Red Queen Effect, is an evolutionary hypothesis which proposes that organisms must constantly adapt, evolve, and proliferate not merely to gain reproductive advantage, but also simply to survive while pitted against ever-evolving opposing organisms in an ever-changing environment. Source: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen_hypothesis). Please, check also attached graph showing never-ending war between Prey and Predators - one of the most famous example for Red Queen Effect.

(...) arms race is known as the Red Queen Effect…”It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.” A species has to continuously improve just to survive, and any species that can’t keep up – or bumps up against psychological or environmental constraints – become extinct.

Red Queen Effect 

According to one of Gartner’s articles : Most companies respond to this challenge (Red Queen Effect) with an attitude of “work harder, faster” investing more in core competencies and familiar resources. This is a losing proposition. It amounts to doing more of the same, just at a quicker pace. Rather than accelerating innovation, this approach traps companies in what can be termed the “Red Queen Effect.” In another words: Most companies try to differentiate themselves from their competitors by better products or improved processes leading to a better cost structure. The problem is that their competitors do the same thing at the same time so after a firework of new products the situation is pretty much the same. You moved forward but your competitor also moved forward. If you do not move, you fall behind. 

Now, lets go back to security. So how Red Queen Effect is influencing security and what can be the best example for it?

The scope of defection increases with more technology. This means that the societal pressures we traditionally put in place to limit defections no longer work, and we need to rethink security. It's easy to see this in terms of terrorism: one of the reasons terrorists are so scary today is that they can do more damage to society than the terrorists of 20 years ago could--and future technological developments will make the terrorists of 20 years from now scarier still.

It is now  easily understood that the  old-school competition, dog eat dog and arms race have many disadvantages and in the worst case scenario the level of security and  trust may remain the same. What can be done to find the way to behave correctly without risk (incident response, innovations) and do not end with Red Queen Effect? The last fragment presented here from the book may be the answer or just truth about ourselves:

We are social mammals whose brains are highly specialized for thinking about others. Understanding what others are up to – what they know and want, what they are doing and planning – has been so crucial to the survival of our species that our brains have developed an obsession with all things human. We think about people and their intentions, talk about them; look for and remember them. 

Check http://www.schneier.com/ for more information about the author (Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive) and read this great book for more fascinating knowledge and paths. Sources: http://blog.business-model-innovation.com, and http://blogs.gartner.com.