Richard Bird, a cybersecurity executive and author, has launched the Hacker in a Hoodie (HIH) Index — a website that tracks disclosed material cyber breaches by drawing on SEC EDGAR filings and news sources, grading each entry by the reliability of its sourcing. Unlike industry estimates that aggregate losses into headline figures, Bird deliberately avoids summing the data, arguing that combining inconsistently evidenced entries produces misleading numbers that resemble the marketing-driven projections already plaguing the field. The project's broader argument is that cybersecurity has long been measured by activity rather than outcomes, and that treating it as a business cost rather than a performance-tracked function is the root cause of the industry's persistent failure to reduce breaches.
