Security Education & Training

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The talent war is real, the strength in numbers favors our opponent, we now have the original digital transformations we were planning pre-COVID, and now we have additional transformations that we have to take on to enable a distributed workforce that was previously never a consideration. There simply are not enough properly equipped resources to meet global demand, and even then, an organization is only as strong as its weakest analyst.  The adversary knows that and, leverages the vulnerabilities in human behavior to advance their position in the “infinite game” of cyber warfare.

If you were in an IT-related field 10 years ago, the term “Shadow IT” might strike fear into your heart. In case you missed it – or blocked out the bad memory – that’s when business SaaS emerged, enabling lines-of-business (LOB) teams to buy their own turnkey software solutions for the first time. Why was it called “Shadow” IT? Because IT security teams typically weren’t involved in the analysis or deployment of these Saas applications. IT security often didn’t find out about the apps until something went wrong and they were called in to help – and by that point, data, apps and accounts had sprawled across the cloud.

Despite their preference for remote work, Millennials and Gen Zers experience more technological issues, struggle more with password management, and are far more reckless in their online activity than older demographics. Not only do these younger employees create more work for IT teams and service desk personnel, but they also pose as significant cybersecurity liabilities for corporations.

Nearly two-thirds of workers who have been working remotely during the pandemic would like to continue to do so. While working from home, the boundaries between work and life can decrease or disappear altogether, as employees are using their corporate devices for personal use more than ever before. As we enter the holiday season, IT teams can expect this work/life blend to translate into increased online shopping on corporate devices, which in turn exposes the network to additional cybersecurity threats.

According to media reports, the U.S. Energy Department and National Nuclear Security Administration have evidence that hackers accessed their networks as part of a major cyber espionage operation that affected many U.S. federal agencies. 

Though many healthcare organizations still consider it optional, two-factor authentication - also known as Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) - is an indispensable part of a secure environment, and key to protecting your medical data.

The coronavirus pandemic has sparked a new round of digital transformation. But in many cases, the rapid pace of digital acceleration has enlarged the digital footprint of both businesses and consumers beyond the capacity of our cybersecurity infrastructure to keep up. The scary reality is that the business impact of COVID-19 may be creating the perfect storm for a cybercrime pandemic; digital citizens will have to act aggressively to secure their data before it’s too late.

A recent survey conducted among consumers and IT professionals by SecureAge Technology suggests that a majority of these groups believe COVID-19 contact-tracing technologies put individuals' personally identifiable information (PII) at risk. Generally, however, both these groups believed that these types of tools could help mitigate the spread of the disease, and would support a nationwide rollout of the technology in spite of privacy concerns. So, are contact tracing apps a 'necessary evil'? If so, what can be done to make these apps safer to protect PII and the privacy of the public? Here, we talk to Paul Kohler, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at S3 Consulting.