Engineering product and process for a hostile and neurodiverse world

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Presented at Bsides Cymru 2025 by

Dr King

We don't all think the same. Perhaps as many as one in three entrepreneurs self-identify as neurodivergent. As engineers, managers, consultants, and business leader our point of reference is ourselves. By default, we will engineer a product or a process to make sense to the way we experience the world. Two individuals may process the events in very different ways and both perspectives are equally valid. The nature of each response may literally be part of their DNA and/or environmental conditioning. This aspect of designing product and process is often overlook, but becomes business critical when a behavioural response, such as choosing not to click a phishing link, is a organisations last and critical line of defence against cyber-attack. We explore how expecting individuals to simulate an others perceived preferences and responses, is tiring and error prone. Expecting conformity fails to deliver a robust security response when product and process are exposed to real world conditions. A.I. (Large Language Models) are trained on a data set which is produced in large part by neurotypical authors or writing in a neurotypical style. We conclude by identifying where AI can skew the real world security effectiveness of product and process when biased with neurotypical assumptions in training.