I am well aware that I harp on about online security awareness. However, encouraging members of the public to increase their online security benefits more than just the individual. People apply safer online practices in business and at home, and pass them on to their colleagues, family and friends.
At the recent CSO Perspectives Security Roadshow, I had the privilege to moderate a roundtables on disrupting the kill chain—or attack chain. I was fortunate to be joined by an international expert on the subject, Tim Treat.
The short answer to this problem is no. Humans are simple creatures of predictable habit.
The long answer is that many individuals and organisations simply do not know, or care about, the risks associated with using passwords and basic email systems as opposed to multi-factor authentication and encrypted messaging systems.
Mental Health is something that all enterprises, indeed all individuals, need to be aware of and have practices and policies in place to pro-actively identify, and address, before it becomes a major issue.
The Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) officially opened in Canberra this week. YAY!
I would like to briefly touch on information security in the age of the Internet of Things (IoT). This carries on from my last blog article, which looked at proactive vs lazy security practitioners and, in particular, those who focus on raising the personal security awareness, and therefore the greater security maturity, of their organisations’ human resources.
In my last blog I raised the spectre of hacking humans brains following the recent disclosure that Facebook has been experimenting (sorry researching) affects of positive versus negative feeds from friends.
Human factors have always been the bane of security professionals, and social engineering is also high on the list of factors requiring mitigation measures and controls. Yet their very nature makes them highly variable – humans will always work out circumvention to a control if it makes their lives easier.
Whether you attribute this quote to Rita Mae Brown, or Albert Einstein, it’s out there and it sums up a lot of security practices: “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
Having worked in and around information security for more than 20 years, I think I’m in a good position to make observations about the industry.
Coming soon....