Sony PlayStation Network, Citigroup, Lockheed and several others have seen more than 100 million customer records breached, costing billions in recovery costs and reputation damage. If it can happen to the big boys, it can happen to you. If you don’t have Bond on your side fighting off the villains, take these steps to take to secure your business data:
Although there is a great deal of excitement over the concept of a breach-proof internet, for now Data security training is the only foolproof protection businesses have against the Syrian Electronic Army, Chinese hackers and a host of other internet-based attackers.
Such attackers know that employees tend to be the first line of defense against hackers targeting businesses and they’ve been succesfully breaching sensitive data—financial records, trade secrets and personal information — in more and more high profile cases.
But what if the internet was “hacker-proof”?
Researchers at Los Alamos National Labs in New Mexico believe they have found a way to use quantum physics to cloak internet communications. Businessweek explains that this method, which researchers call “network-centric quantum communications,” uses “digital keys, generated by a truly random set of numbers, theoretically [leaving] hackers with no way to figure out the key’s internal coding.”
As you might imagine, it’s a complicated process, and one that is not without its flaws:
USA Today recently opined that the venture capital flooding into the cyber security marketplace is justified. Unlike the dotcom boom and bust cycle of the late 90s, it says, the current spending on securing information capital is justified, as the Internet and corporate networks are in dire need of better protection. Without even a moment’s hiccough, this is undeniably true.
Take some recent cases in point: China hacking into the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, or the Syrian Electronic Army cracking into the Associated Press and 60 Minutes. If you’re looking for corporate examples, look no further than the $45 million stolen by cyber thieves via MasterCard pre-paid debit cards. Cyber security is the new darling of the Obama administration, the media and Sandhill Road because all three are finally learning how much they have to lose (or in the case of VCs, gain) by ignoring cyber security.
The Pentagon has now openly accused China of launching online attacks on the U.S. Will your cyber security training withstand the mounting threat?
There is no more dancing around it now. Although there have been mentions and whispers of Chinese-based cyber attacks in the past, China has now been publicly named as responsible for performing cyber espionage on American cyber soil. This move away from the indirect, diplomatic approach of addressing cyber espionage and into a more direct dialogue signals a new direction in the cyber threat debate.
The language coming from the government on this is chilling, and although we’ve known something about state-sponsored cyber espionage for some time, to see it written in the DOD’s Annual Report to Congress will make you think twice about the imminent threat and the depth of your cyber security training.
The free WiFi hotspot ritual is habitual. You head to your favorite café to get some work done “away from the office”. Justifying your $4 cup of 50 cent coffee with a Starbucks-approved rationalization (“I work so much more efficiently at my 3rd spot!”), you flip open your laptop, link to the free WiFi and get down to business. The caffeine primes your creativity, the bustling noise provides a canvass backdrop for your artful work and the hyper-convenient Internet access makes it easy for someone else (think organized criminal) to intercept everything you send through the air.
Do you use the discount site LivingSocial? If so, your email and password could now be a little more “social” than you wanted thanks to a new data breach that occurred on April 26.
A data breach has punctured LivingSocial and resulted in the exposure of the personal information of at least 50 million users. The leaked information includes names, birthdays and email addresses – very useful pieces of data if you’re an identity thief trying to figure out a way to get into someone’s profile or make a profit selling that same information. But what makes this attack even more devastating is that hackers were also able to get a hold of encrypted passwords. Even though the passwords were encrypted through processes called hashing and salting, it likely will not take hackers long to figure out the original passwords.
As technology gadgets get ever smaller and more pervasive, there’s never been a better time to increase your focus on mobile security training. Users of Google Glass could discover their digital risks the hard way.
The world is gaga over Google Glass, the head-mounted electronic interface that promises to pack everything your computer can do (and more) into a wearable display. But despite all of the excitement surrounding Glass, it appears to be lacking in security. The trial version of the product is currently only available to relatively few developers, but some have already discovered an easy way to bypass the built-in operating system.
The device might be new, but the operating system it uses is old. In fact, it’s the same OS used in some Android phones. It reportedly took hacking specialist Jay Freeman a mere couple of hours to “jailbreak” Glass. As with phones and other devices, once the initial settings have been bypassed, the device can be configured in ways contrary to the original design. Another user was similarly able to “root” the system (take it over at the most basic level) by manipulating its “debug mode.”
Do you manage a blog or company site powered by WordPress? If so, your online data security may be in jeopardy.
Any popular site for hosting content can be a natural magnet for the devious intentions of hackers. Wordpress is free and easy to use, and its popularity has made it a victim of security breaches before.
In the most recent case, the culprit seems to be a botnet – a collection of internet-connected programs communicating with other similar programs in order to perform tasks. This botnet prays on the careless and naive by targeting any site with a login that contains the word “admin” or other default-sounding names and by predicting passwords. It goes to show that when it comes to crafting your digital identity, applying even basic computer tricks taught to kids in elementary school these days can help protect your rights and information.
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