Security Confidential S11 E5 Bec McKeown

Manoj Tandon: Hello everyone, this is your host, Manoj Tandon. Welcome to another episode of Dark Rhino Security Confidential. Today, we are honored to have Bec McKeown join us. Beth is joining us all the way from the United Kingdom. She is a chartered psychologist with 20 years of experience researching and evaluating human performance in high-risk, high-stakes organizations, including organizations like the UK Ministry of Defense. She’s an expert on the ways humans behave when working in highly complex, uncertain, and ambiguous environments. Human performance in cybersecurity is really her cup of tea, and we’re really eager to hear her take on it. She also established Mind Science, which is an organization designed to assist companies at the operational and strategic levels. Welcome to the show, Bec. Thank you for joining us.

Bec McKeown: And thank you very much for inviting me. It’s great to be here.

Manoj Tandon: Wow, there’s just so much to talk about. We have an honest-to-God psychologist. But I’ve got to—so we’re stateside, you know, we do things a little differently. One of the things that we want to understand is: give us your background. What is a chartered psychologist? We’ve heard of—in the UK they call them Chartered Accountants; in the United States we call them Certified Public Accountants (CPA). So what’s a chartered psychologist?

Bec McKeown: Yeah, it’s kind of similar, I guess, in a way. The “chartered” bit is because I’m a member of the British Psychological Society, and I had to go through a whole load of stuff to get chartered status regarding my experience and my qualifications. Basically, it means that it’s a legal recognition of my specialism and a guarantee that I deliver the highest quality standards. That’s the blurb that’s written on the BPS website. So it’s just the acknowledgment that I haven’t just got qualifications in psychology; I’ve also got in-depth experience. So, you’ve got a sort of quality check when you have somebody who’s a chartered psychologist.

Psychology covers lots of different areas. We’ve all heard of clinical psychologists and forensic psychologists; it’s none of that. My Master’s degree is in applied psychology. What that means is that I take all the theory and the science of psychology and apply it to real-world problems associated with the way that people behave.

And for me, that’s the beauty of it: taking the theory and applying it. So it’s not just sitting in an ivory tower reading books and discussing theory; it’s proper real-world stuff.

Manoj Tandon: So you can help us with practical outcomes.

Bec McKeown: Yes, that’s a very good way of putting it, and I shall steal that and write it down.

Manoj Tandon: Yeah, that’s a very good thing, because the last time I took a psychology class was back in college, and I was like, “Well, how do I make this work?”

Bec McKeown: Yeah.

Manoj Tandon: So this is fantastic. But let me ask you—as a psychologist, and you’ve studied the human brain and human behavior—I’m going to use the wrong choice of words here, but correct me. It almost seems like human behavior is chaotic. Coherence is difficult to achieve. How do you control that chaos, or am I thinking the wrong way about it?

Bec McKeown: I don’t know if it’s about controlling chaos. I think it’s about understanding where it comes from. It is a bit chaotic because everybody is different. Individuals have different personality traits and different experiences.

I think the most frustrating thing is the fact that we think we’re consistent in our behavior, and we’re absolutely not. We do change very much according to the situation that we’re in. I think as you start to learn these things and recognize those characteristics, it becomes less chaotic because you can at least explain it, even if you can’t fully understand it.

Manoj Tandon: Wow. So are you saying that even if we’ve drilled behaviors in over time—like having a cup of coffee every morning—we might not follow that pattern?

Bec McKeown: Yes. We are creatures of habit. People often do the same thing over and over again, but when they are out of their habit zone, they become chaotic. And sometimes even those habits don’t work as expected.

You might make your morning coffee while your mind is elsewhere, thinking about work or family, and suddenly you’ve put milk in the cup but no coffee, or the coffee jar in the fridge. That’s called a “slip.” It happens because your brain is busy doing other things.

It doesn’t mean anything is wrong with you—it’s just how the brain operates. I call it the “cogs and dials.” It’s a finely tuned system. If you understand how it works and how it impacts behavior, you can recognize patterns and put things in place to be more effective.

Manoj Tandon: At Dark Rhino Security, about half our workforce is former military. Their training is highly regimented and repetitive. The idea is to take the mind out of decision-making in high-pressure situations—so responses become automatic.

Bec McKeown: Yes, drills and automatic responses. They’re quick and effective because there’s no thought involved. That comes from repetition.

Manoj Tandon: But if humans aren’t consistent, how do we ensure outcomes?

Bec McKeown: It’s a “yes and no” answer. Drills work well for structured tasks—like loading and firing a rifle. But they don’t work for complex, emotional topics like equality and diversity.

Some things can be trained through repetition. Others require experience and even mistakes to learn. Training isn’t one-size-fits-all.

Manoj Tandon: Is there a baseline response for teams under pressure?

Bec McKeown: Yes. The brain is hardwired to respond to threats. When a threat is perceived, the amygdala triggers a response—adrenaline flows, and you get fight, flight, or freeze.

As adrenaline increases, reasoning decreases. The brain narrows focus to the threat—this is called cognitive narrowing.

Everyone experiences this. The level depends on experience, confidence, and familiarity. Inexperienced people may panic or act incorrectly. Experienced people recognize cues and respond more effectively.

Manoj Tandon: That’s concerning for cybersecurity teams, especially when junior analysts are often first responders.

Bec McKeown: Exactly. The key isn’t flipping the team structure—it’s passing down experience effectively.

Manoj Tandon: How do you do that?

Bec McKeown: Through experience sharing and storytelling. One example comes from Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow. A firefighter instinctively evacuated a building before it collapsed—not through conscious reasoning, but pattern recognition built from experience.

That’s intuition—experience made automatic.

To transfer that, the military uses After Action Reviews. Teams walk through what happened, step by step. This allows less experienced members to learn through narrative, not just reports.

Manoj Tandon: That helps with context, which is usually hard to transfer.

Bec McKeown: Exactly. And that’s where cognitive agility comes in—critical thinking, relationship-building, and metacognition (understanding how you learn).

Through repeated scenarios and reflection, people recognize patterns and develop adaptive expertise.

Manoj Tandon: We’ve had people go through simulations and decide it’s not for them. Can those people be “saved”?

Bec McKeown: Not everyone fits every role. Some people thrive under pressure; others don’t. It’s about placing people in roles that match their strengths.

Some people need all the data before deciding; others act quickly. A balanced team needs both—but they must understand each other to avoid conflict.

Manoj Tandon: Is there a formal way to build that understanding?

Bec McKeown: It depends on the organization. But it doesn’t require expensive retreats. Small, consistent efforts—like short scenario sessions every few weeks—can build strong relationships.

That way, when a real incident happens, the team already understands each other and works effectively together.

Manoj Tandon: So more practice and building comfort within the team.

Bec McKeown: Exactly.

Manoj Tandon: That sounds a lot like Special Forces training.

Bec McKeown: What can I say? It’s the same approach.

Watch Episode 2 with Bec McKeown