Des Moines Cybersecurity Conference

Security decisions aren’t made in a vacuum — they’re often shaped by mental shortcuts, outdated assumptions, and pressure to act fast. Cognitive biases like anchoring, availability, and confirmation bias often sneak into risk assessments, leading to reactive strategies, overemphasis on headline threats, or clinging to legacy controls.

This session will dive into how we can break free from “we’ve always done it this way” thinking and steer their programs with greater clarity and impact. We’ll explore how common decision-making traps surface in the real world and how they quietly shape policy, control choices, and impact standard work. By taking a fresh lens on how bias affects your program’s security posture, we’ll discuss tactics to shift from a reactive to proactive strategy through practical methods that leverage data to build a trust-aligned program that scale.

Whether you’re maturing a SOC, leading cloud transformation, securely enabling artificial intelligence efforts, or maturing your zero-trust roadmap, this session will equip you with tools to spot hidden biases — and replace them with stronger, clearer judgment.