ABSTRACT
Generations of psychologists have considered the question of why people behave extremely prosaically and are very statistically focused react so irrationally when assessing risks. It is not only people as private persons who are confronted with the problem of an inadequate ability for assessing risks but also equally responsible persons in companies. Perception is often the cause of worries specifically in the field of company security. If one deals with the security of organisations professionally, one is not infrequently suspected of being a doomsayer and conspiracy theorist oneself. The inadequacies of the Internet infrastructure are so great that researchers are seriously considering starting again from scratch and redeveloping it – with built-in security features. The British MI5 security agency estimates the losses for British corporations due to spying to be as high as US$16 billion annually, with a single incident alone costing a UK company roughly US$1.2 billion.
