Companies can realize big cybersecurity gains by making small changes
Best practices include altering behavior, tighter management to fend off the bad guys
Featured Story
By Byron Acohido, ThirdCertainty
October is Cyber Security Awareness Month, so designated by President Obama. It’s a good opportunity to advance the discussion about how we must all work together to make the Internet safer.
In the accompanying podcast, Idan Tendler and I outline how we got to where we are today. That sets up discussion about trends and patterns in motion that suggests the badness factor of the Internet can and will be mitigated over time.
Tendler, founder and CEO of Fortscale, is a serial entrepreneur steeped in the fields of network security and threat intelligence. Before founding Fortscale, Tendler was a lead agent of 8200—the cyber warfare division of the Israeli Defense Forces.
As we discuss in this podcast, society is dealing with security and privacy challenges that were unimaginable just 10 years ago. This is so because, on a daily basis, we all use search, email and file sharing. Many of us live and die by our productivity suites, CRM and cloud storage.
More: Companies of all sizes are under attack
No question, this has made us more productive, by many measures. But it also has opened endless vectors of attack—wide-open door and windows through which those with criminal intent can intrude.
Changing passwords, updating antivirus, being wary of attachments and links are absolutely necessary, going forward. But it isn’t enough. Much more needs to be done at the macro level, by the private and public sectors, and by the individual, as well, by those at the top, and those at the grassroots level.
As Tendler and I discuss in this podcast, no silver bullet exists, but the good news is that big gains can result from the embrace of simple practices. Much can be gained by tighter management of privileged user accounts, for instance. And behavior analysis technology—used successfully by the financial services industry to mitigate payment card fraud—is being rapidly adapted to detecting nefarious activity by network intruders.
Give it a listen and join the discourse.
More on cybersecurity:
When it comes to cybersecurity, gap between IT, boardroom must be bridged
Third-party vendors are the weak links in cybersecurity
Worsening IRS hack shows cybersecurity too low a priority
The federal government needs a cybersecurity marathon, not a sprint
Posted in Cybersecurity, Featured Story, News & Analysis