Reverse Benchmarking: Learn from the Biggest Cyber Faceplants

Episode notes

What if the best way to protect your business isn't copying what the successful companies do, but avoiding what the failures did wrong? Welcome to reverse benchmarking, the cybersecurity equivalent of learning from other people's face-plants so you don't repeat them. In this episode, Noel and Mauven flip traditional benchmarking on its head. Instead of asking "what are the best companies doing?", they explore the far more revealing question: "what did the disasters get catastrophically wrong?" From the Target breach via an HVAC vendor to ransomware attacks on UK holiday parks, the hosts dissect spectacular cybersecurity failures to extract practical lessons for small businesses. You'll discover why copying enterprise best practices often backfires for SMBs, how compliance creates dangerous false security, and practical ways to build your own "disaster library" of lessons learned. Plus, the hosts reveal why some of the worst cybersecurity advice comes from studying successful companies rather than failed ones. This isn't just negativity packaged as strategy.