Cybersecurity Update: Dangerous Technological Dependencies

UPDATE: CYBER THREATS AND CYBERSECURITY

“Into the breach we must go!” - Douglas Castle

“This ain’t no party/ This ain’t no disco…” - from Life During Wartime by The Talking Heads

In terms of data breaches, identity theft, computer-originated financial fraud, ransomware, viruses, trojan horses and backdoor invasions (and commandeering of systems), I believe that no one and no organization is truly safe or exempt. No matter how much we, as the public, hear about breaches and their purported impact, there is a whole alternate universe of companies who have experienced breaches that they are not forthcoming enough to disclose.

The more dependent we as a society become on computers, devices, the cloud and other dangerous dependencies (I’m a bit of a Luddite and a technophobe myself), the more we are at risk of loss. It seems that there is a definite tradeoff here: convenience versus security. And more and more, the default choice is convenience as technology becomes further ingrained into our collective psyche and into our day-to-day operations in virtually every aspect of our existence.

Short of eliminating the use of these magical methodologies, we should take steps to temper our activities with a modicum of caution. Here are a few suggestions, coming from my alternate life as a Global Futurist . Some are practical, while others involve an element of behavior modification and wishful thinking:

1. Print out and store documents and critical information in hard copy form to the greatest extent possible. If your drive becomes wiped or the information becomes infected or compromised, you’ll have your important records secure;

2. Increase your percentage of Human-To-Human communications and transactions. Personalize, Recognize and Humanize;

3. For computer and data security, use the most effective anti-virus, anti-malware, anti-hacker attempt (yep. That’s a real feature) software, downloaded or otherwise obtained from a highly-trusted source;

4. Don’t share your screen or documents (i.e., Google Docs, etc.) with anyone, if you can avoid it;

5. Keep passcodes and other access information off of your computer, and on a separate manual record. Keep that record well-hidden, but accessible to you. Keep it under lock and key, but don’t bother using a computer-activated lock -- that would defeat the whole purpose;

I’m also a big fan of multiple biometric device security in combination with ever-changing, encrypted passwords or “sayings of the day”-type passwords to make direct access to your machine or device extremely difficult in a full frontal attempt to breach your system security. As you’d guess, I’m highly paranoid with respect to the cloud -- I believe that what goes up, will come down -- but it might come down to someone else’s system. I have sweating, shaking nightmares about the cloud being hacked, or satellites being hacked, or public utilities being hacked…

The problem of vulnerability grows as we enter, head first, into the Era Of Complacent And Complete CyberDomination, where the inventions which were supposed to make our lives simpler and safer are now rapidly and quietly becoming our lives' masters. Laziness makes for a lack of vigilance. 

 

Let’s truly make November “Computer Security Month”. Now let’s look at what the pundits have to say, for a full-blown Halloween scare-a-thon.

Oh, and thank you, as always, for reading me. - Douglas

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Let’s start with some frightening statistics and projections from 2017 to up to five years hence. This information was excerpted from CSO Online...

“These top level numbers summarize the cybersecurity industry over the past year and indicate what's in store for the next five years.

1. Cyber crime damage costs to hit $6 trillion annually by 2021. It all begins and ends with cyber crime. Without it, there's nothing to cyber-defend. The cybersecurity community and major media have largely concurred on the prediction that cyber crime damages will cost the world $6 trillion annually by 2021, up from $3 trillion just a year ago. This represents the greatest transfer of economic wealth in history, risks the incentives for innovation and investment, and will be more profitable than the global trade of all major illegal drugs combined.

2. Cybersecurity spending to exceed $1 trillion from 2017 to 2021. The rising tide of cyber crime has pushed information security (a subset of cybersecurity) spending to more than $86.4 billion in 2017, according to Gartner. That doesn't include an accounting of Internet of Things (IoT), Industrial IoT, and Industrial Control Systems (ICS) security, automotive security, and other cybersecurity categories. Global spending on cybersecurity products and services are predicted to exceed $1 trillion over the next five years, from 2017 to 2021.

3. Cyber crime will more than triple the number of unfilled cybersecurity jobs, which is predicted to reach 3.5 million by 2021. Every IT position is also a cybersecurity position now. Every IT worker, every technology worker, needs to be involved with protecting and defending apps, data, devices, infrastructure and people. The cybersecurity workforce shortage is even worse than what the jobs numbers suggest. As a result, the cybersecurity unemployment rate has dropped to zero percent.

4. Human attack surface to reach 6 billion people by 2022. As the world goes digital, humans have moved ahead of machines as the top target for cyber criminals. There are 3.8 billion internet users in 2017 (51 percent of the world’s population of 7 billion), up from 2 billion in 2015. Cybersecurity Ventures predicts there will be 6 billion internet users by 2022 (75 percent of the projected world population of 8 billion) — and more than 7.5 billion internet users by 2030 (90 percent of the projected world population of 8.5 million, 6 years of age and older). The hackers smell blood now, not silicon.

5. Global ransomware damage costs are predicted to exceed $5 billion in 2017. That's up from $325 million in 2015—a 15X increase in two years, and expected to worsen. Ransomware attacks on healthcare organizations—the No. 1 cyber-attacked industry—will quadruple by 2020. Cybersecurity Ventures predicts that a business will fall victim to a ransomware attack every 14 seconds by 2019.

What does it all mean? In 2015, Ginni Rometty, IBM's chairman, president and CEO, said, "Cyber crime is the greatest threat to every company in the world."

And she was right. During the next five years, cybercrime might become the greatest threat to every person, place and thing in the world.”

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October 13, 2017 - Excerpted From American Express OPEN FORUM

October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month

While the annual campaign is designed to raise awareness about cybersecurity breaches, as a business owner you're probably well aware of the growing threat.

The mounting number of company computer and data system breaches illustrates that it's no longer a question of if your company's sensitive data will be hacked, but when. Data analytics researcher Juniper Research predicts that data breach costs will reach $2.1 trillion throughout the world by 2019.

“It's important to realize that your company is at risk, which makes vigilance critical," says Gary S. Miliefsky, executive producer of Cyber Defense Magazine. “Many owners of small to medium-sized businesses don't think they're targets of hackers or cyber crime, but the fact is that most breaches are smaller now. To stay under the radar of the FBI and Secret Service, cyber criminals steal a small number of records, monetize those records and then hit again."

“This 'Wild West' phase of learning to anticipate and work against cyber threats goes deeper than surviving a breach and picking up the pieces afterwards," says Rob Arnold, founder and CEO of the cyber risk management company Threat Sketch and author of Cybersecurity: A Business Solution

.

“History is repeating itself," Arnold continues. “The future will play out just like it has with the advent of the internet. Businesses that embraced technology at a strategic level left their brick-and-mortar peers in the dust. In the same respect, those companies that learn to effectively manage cybersecurity threats will be the ones that are still in business 25 years from now."

New Cybersecurity Features

In order to thrive amidst the perpetual threat of cyberattacks, it helps to familiarize yourself with the latest arsenal of cybersecurity prevention tools available. Consider possibly incorporating the following new innovations into your company:

Automatic Classification of Cybersecurity Threats

“The problem in cybersecurity today is not a lack of tools," says Avi Chesla, CEO of the cybersecurity company empow

. “The question is how to 'read' the huge amount of data these tools generate and to understand the potential impact, such as a malicious attacker's intent."

   

A hack often starts with a spear-phishing attack where an employee clicks a link or opens an attachment in an email that appears to come from someone they trust.

—Gary S. Miliefsky, executive producer, Cyber Defense Magazine

           

According to Chesla, there are new cybersecurity capabilities that use Natural Language Processing algorithms. These collect and interpret system information and classify that information by intent. Knowing intent helps companies proactively respond to advanced threats.

Intelligent Cyber Threat Hunting

“With system breaches becoming more common, it's more important than ever for cybersecurity systems to have the capability to hunt and locate compromised hosts within systems," says Chesla.

                               

“New intelligent hunters include a technology that can identify host-related anomaly behavior, collect and analyze evidence," he continues, "such as unexpected processes and applications that run on the host, and create new IOC  [indicator of compromise] signatures accordingly." Detected IOC signatures indicate the presence of a security breach, such as malware. They are used to create new IOC signature files that are uploaded to scan systems in order to detect additional threats.

New Methods of Handling Vulnerable Data

“One of the biggest revolutions in cybersecurity is the idea that companies can attain the verified data they need without having to hold or manage personally identifiable information (PII) in one place," says David Thomas, CEO of Evident, a company that offers an Application Programming Interface that eliminates the need to collect, hold and protect personal data.

“Traditionally, any data that a business receives from a customer or employee is held in one potentially vulnerable database," says Thomas. “This means that if/when a breach occurs, hackers can get everything they want in one fell swoop. Companies are getting smarter about not only clarifying the data they need to ensure safety and security, but also how they need to handle that data to mitigate risk and liability."

The Use of Behavioral Biometrics

Ensuring identity is a common practice in cybersecurity protocol. Behavioral biometrics is the newest addition to this practice.

“Behavioral biometrics identifies people by how they do what they do, rather than by what they are (e.g., fingerprint, face), what they know (e.g. secret question, password) or what they have (e.g. token, SMS one-time code)," says Frances Zelazny, Vice President of BioCatch, a cybersecurity company offering behavioral biometrics to banks and other businesses.

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