The Looming Threat of Fatigue, Stress and Burnout in Cybersecurity
The March 2022 attack on communications app maker 3CX was not the first attempt by threat actors to monetize their scams. Perpetrated by the Labyrinth Chollima group based in North Korea, the attack – nicknamed Smooth Operator – has however been acknowledged as the first recorded instance of a breach that linked two separate supply […]
Identity Fabric Immunity – IAM Redefined
Introduction At the March 2023 Gartner Identity & Access Management Summit, which brought together the Who’s Who of the cyber security world to debate the evolving world of Identity Fabric Immunity, the script could well have read ‘In the beginning there was IAM’. In a series of eye-opening presentations, Gartner’s experts led the elite audience […]
Digital Supply Chains: Under Siege in the Cyber Realm
Introduction Though the evolution of cyber threats (1) dates back to 2013 when Iranian hackers breached the Bowman Avenue Dam in New York and seized control of the dam’s floodgates, the year 2021 is generally recognized as the benchmark year for cyber attacks on digital supply chains. The month of May 2021 witnessed a series […]
The Advantages of Vendor Consolidation and Product Convergence in Cybersecurity
Introduction As with the case of every other entity, the suite of applications, platforms, and software procured over a period by an organization, can become disorganized, unmanageable, and even inoperable and redundant to an extent. The same can be said of the numerous vendors who provide/service them. Once ‘best-in-breed’ solution/s, they were most probably procured […]
Cyberbullying: The Real and Present Danger
Introduction From time immemorial, human beings have tried, with varying degrees of success, to impose themselves on others, with a view to profit from the reactions that their offensive and slanderous overtures result in. Face-to-face bullying can be traced back to ancient civilizations when both kings and paupers alike resorted to domineering ways to further […]
Enhancing Productivity and Security: The Case for a Clean Desk Policy in Organizations
In a corporate world seemingly already overwhelmed with a variety of policies – HR, Safety, Infotech, HSE, to name just a few – it may seem the addition of the Clean Desk Policy (CDP) is one more in a long list of policies that employees in an organization are required to follow. Not so, especially […]
Exploring the Synergy: Big Data, AI, and the Human Interface
Think about the future and the John Lennon hit Imagine comes readily to mind. Though the iconic singer-songwriter alluded to a non-material world in the song, its central theme, so aptly represented by its title, could easily refer to the times in which we live. As the cyber world takes quantum strides with the introduction […]
The Dark Side of Technology: Deepfakes and their Threat to Cyber Security
Introduction In 2019, when the head of a UK energy firm (1) received an urgent call from the CEO of the company’s German headquarters, advising that he immediately transfer a sum of GBP 220,000 to a Hungarian supplier, he had absolutely no reason to doubt the authenticity of the call. After all such interactions at […]
Social Engineering at Work
In early 2020, when a manager in a bank in Hong Kong received a phone call from a director of a company he knew (1), asking him to transfer some USD 35 million from his company’s account to various beneficiaries, he never could have imagined he was being duped. To add to the phone call, […]
AI – The Twin-Edged Sword Shaping the Future of Cybersecurity
Almost all new inventions that promise to revolutionize a field or remedy a despairing situation are fraught with dangers that bear examination. Take the case of how the aviation industry struggled to shake off the apprehensions of safety after the early debacles of the Wright brothers. Decades would pass before the industry reached maturity, and […]