Facebook’s CSO says empathy is key to defending users against bad actors online

Facebook was arguably the most important battleground for information warfare in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, and its chief security officer says cybersecurity professionals need to do more to protect Internet users from bad actors.

That will require something that’s too often lacking in the security industry: more empathy. “We have a real inability to put ourselves in the shoes of the people we are trying to protect,” Alex Stamos told the audience Wednesday at the Black Hat computer security conference in Las Vegas.