ANTIDOTUM MITHRIDATIUM: Building Resilience Against Attack
Legend has it that Mithridates IV, King of Pontus, Asia Minor, protected himself against poisoning by ingesting doses of toxic material over a period of time, on the premise that what does not kill you, makes you stronger.
He built resilience within himself to withstand and self-protect from poison. Hence the word: ‘mithridatism’.
We Are In Troubled Times
There is trouble in the world, as we all well know. There are continuous and unrelenting attacks/attempts by hostile and malign forces to de-stabilize us personally, our businesses, our communities, our society, the British Nation.
We are overwhelmed by the weaponisation of information to manipulate emotions, and behaviour particularly on social media platforms and the internet generally.
It is still the ‘Wild West’ without regulation or adequate filters. Attacks, counter-attacks, defence and offensive strategies are ever-important, but, if an enemy intends to cause harm, (armed with sufficient conviction, resources and opportunity), inevitably they will succeed.
Is Resilience the answer?
How should we all respond to such inevitable impact? Rather than to adopt a policy of ‘ostrichism’, namely the cost of refusing to acknowledge or confront unpleasant realities, or else taking a view that such an attack could never happen, the notion of ‘resilience’ is surely within our grasp.
Paul Martin in his authoritative and highly regarded work, ‘The Rules of Security’, devotes a chapter to resilience.
Borrowing from counter-fraud theory, Cressey’s ‘Fraud Triangle’, fraud occurs where a hostile actor rationalises why their actions are rational and necessary, and an opportunity arises for fraud to occur.
Martin says: ‘actively resilient targets are less vulnerable to attack, and a successful attack has less impact’.
The same can be said within the remit of the fraud triangle. Where there is good governance, good systems and checks, and a reduction because of a conscious effort to detect and prevent fraud, the opportunity to do harm is greatly reduced. Martin refers to four types of events:
- Business-as-usual.
- An incident.
- A crisis.
- A disaster.
Passive Resilience, Active Resilience or Antifragility?
There are broadly two types of resilience: passive and active. By way of analogy:
Passive resilience means your home being burgled, having home and contents insurance, being paid out, and getting on with business as usual: ‘bounce back’.
Active resilience means suffering your home being burgled, looking for the weakness that gave rise to a successful violation. Adapting, modifying, and overcoming, thereby building resilience: ‘adapt well’.
A good business, situationally aware of risks, incidents, crises, and ultimate disasters will build into their policies, their systems, their people, the culture of the business, an incident plan rehearsing and re-imagining contingencies to deal with the foreseeable, and if the structure is good enough, cool headedness adapting for the unforeseeable.
Nassim Taleb in his book, ‘Antifragile’, goes further than just focussing upon the term ‘resilience’. He says: ‘Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the anti-fragile gets better’.
Antifragility for Black Swan Problems?
Taleb argues antifragility, rather than resilience to a Black Swan problem – the impossibility of calculating the risks of consequential rare events and predicting their occurrence.
Modern culture building increasing blindness; a de-sensitivity of judgment based upon constant exposure to extreme emotions on social media of happiness, shock, sadness, and of course anger. Taleb sees the approaches to disorder, and by disorder, I mean uncertainty, the unknown, chance, randomness etc…
What is the possible impact upon those who have been conditioned in terms of resilience as opposed to antifragilism, compared with the ‘fragilista’:
- A Fragilista (Those who have been brought up in cotton wool culture, over-protective parenting, health and safety gone mad, social media junkies no longer being able to distinguish right from wrong, good from bad): Run and hide: Live in fear and constant anxiety: Be more upset that their wifi and internet have stopped working, and will feel totally lost, isolated, and alone.
- Antifragilism: Those who understand ‘fortitude’. One who undergoes a certain level of manageable stress in their lives, used to being knocked down, and getting back up again: Will more likely learn from the experience, adapt, overcome, and come back stronger. They will be most organised. Leadership will be delegated locally, with operational objectives, and therefore: mission leadership. This, in old-school terms, is what we collectively understand to be ‘blitz mentality’: Stoicism and determination.
- Resilience: Through active and passive resilience responses, will learn what to do next time, and be better able to respond. Passive resilience will bounce back. Active resilience will adapt well. They will learn heuristically, but will they be best placed to react and respond to the immediate impact?
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#EMP #litigation #protectivesecurity #security #governance #incidentplan #BlackSwanproblems
Professor David Rosen is a solicitor-advocate and principal of David Rosen & Co. He is a Certified Fraud Examiner, a member of the ACFE Advisory Council, a member of RUSI, and a former strategic director of the Board of the ACFE UK Chapter. He regularly lectures on counter-fraud and counter-corruption as a Professor of Professional Practice at the Brunel University of London Law School.
