[From the desk of Paul Davis – his opinions and no-one else’s, apart from the reporter’s opinions ]
* UN council: Seriously, nations, stop switching off the damn internet
* Millennials and Their Impact on Security
* Cybersecurity: Stop the attacker’s offense, don’t do defense
* Malware banking campaigns against Canadians are increasing: Report
* Boardroom execs still don’t know the value of data
* 7 trends in advanced endpoint protection
UN council: Seriously, nations, stop switching off the damn internet
A resolution [PDF] entitled The promotion, protection and enjoyment of human rights on the Internet effectively extends human rights held offline to the internet.
It was passed by consensus, but only after a determined effort by a number of countries, including China and Russia, to pull out key parts of the text.
In particular, a number of states – notable by their authoritarian stances – were opposed to the resolution’s focus on the need for an accessible and open internet, and its condemnation of violations against people for expressing their views online.
A vote planned for Thursday was delayed to Friday after the issue became heated.
Four amendments pulling out that language were tabled, but none were adopted after an impassioned debate.
Some were surprised by the 13 other countries that lined up with Russia and China in an effort to delete the text on ensuring access to the internet.
Among such authoritarian regimes as Saudi Arabia and Qatar were also democracies including India and South Africa.
Likewise on a second amendment to remove references to freedom of expression.
Russia and China were joined by 15 other countries including India, Kenya and South Africa.
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Millennials and Their Impact on Security
Most graduates coming into the workplace are, like every generation, completely different to those before them.
But the more I interact with this new tribe, the more concerned I am for the security of any organization they work for.
Perhaps because they’ve grown up with technology, millennials don’t seem to have the same questions, hesitations or indeed fears about technology as my generation did.
They expect to be able to bring their own device (BYOD) to work, connect their other personal devices to the corporate network, and see no reason to think twice about connecting to an unsecured WiFi Hotspot in a cafe.
A survey by Software Advice last year claimed that millennials were the worst generation for re-using passwords, accepting social media invites from strangers and were most likely to find security workarounds.
Another survey from Equifax this year claimed that millennials were almost twice as likely to store sensitive data such as PIN numbers and passwords on mobile devices than any other age group surveyed.
It has also been reported that the majority of millennials download and install mobile apps without reading the terms and conditions before hitting ‘accept’ – another new phenomenon.
When updating the software on your smartphone or downloading new applications, you are prompted to click the ‘accept’ button rather than the small T&Cs link.
While the millennials do present a threat, they are also a very engaged workforce -they don’t simply want a job, they want the right job so if they’re working for you, and you can secure them, they present a huge opportunity.
But how do you secure them?
An education program is now essential to ensure employees don’t present a threat to the organization.
Formal policies need to be developed around security and clearly communicated to all employees – covering BYOD, remote working, downloading policies etc, and could even require employees to make their devices available to the IT department for regular reviews.
To stop millennials finding workarounds, the technology must be user-friendly and the organization needs to consider the privacy of the employees and use technology solutions which separate their data from the corporate data.
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Cybersecurity: Stop the attacker’s offense, don’t do defense
A strong defense isn’t enough to beat today’s sophisticated hackers.
Companies must adopt a military mindset and stop the attacker’s offense.
To stop offense, you switch your mindset: instead of thinking about your vulnerabilities, you look for the attacker’s weak points and go after them to shut down the operation.
In essence, you figure out how the enemy is working and use this to your advantage, a concept I like to call the house of cards approach to attack detection.
This does not mean you launch your own attack against the attackers and hack them back.
You want to be able to see all the elements at work in the hacking campaign and cut the attacker’s access to your network at once.
Remediating security threats one by one won’t do anything to protect a company.
One challenge organizations face is that security operations tend to fall under the IT department’s domain.
Security roles need to be filled with workers who have some security background.
or most organizations, cybersecurity stops and ends at computer and servers and isn’t linked to physical security.
But, in reality, the boundaries between cyber and physical security are disappearing.
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Malware banking campaigns against Canadians are increasing: Report
Canadian businesses and residents are increasingly targets for malware campaigns, according to a new blog from security vendor ProofPoint.
The report, issued last week, said the company has seen six different banking Trojan families, including Ursnif, Dridex, Kronos, Zeus, Gootkit, and Vawtrak, all targeting customers of financial institutions in Canada and other countries since May.
The gang behind the Dridex malware is particularly stubborn.
While one of its botnets was taken down last fall and one person was arrested, campaigns using the malware are increasing. says Proofpoint.
Separately, Cisco Systems’ Talos threat intelligence service is warning enterprises of a new campaign that started June 27 for delivering Locky/Zepto ransomware through attachments.
Regular employee awareness training is important to stifling these campaigns, not only having staff be cautious about messages with attachments but also be wary of messages that ask them to disable macros.
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Boardroom execs still don’t know the value of data
Almost two thirds of businesses still don’t know the value of critical data assets being targeted by cybercriminals.
IRM surveyed security heads at their recent conference, and found that just 28 per cent of CISOs regularly conduct exercises to categorise and value the data within their IT estate in order to evaluate the risk associated with its loss. 55 per cent have taken partial action, while 17 per cent had taken no action at all.
Charles White, Founder and CEO of IRM, warns that poor knowledge of the value of data makes it much more difficult to draw up an effective risk strategy and determine how much should be invested to protect the data.
PCI regulations demand strong security to protect credit card details for example, but much more valuable passport information could be completely overlooked.
While a single credit card is worth around £81 on the dark web, a passport can fetch £2,000 or more, making it a much more attractive target.
IRM did however find that the attitude of senior executives in the boardroom had improved. 66 per cent of CISOs stated they now rarely or never had trouble in engaging with the board on the cyber agenda, while just three per cent said they always had difficulties. 57 per cent said that identifying risks and vulnerabilities was the top priority for the next 12 months – 40 more than the next most popular choices of vetting third party suppliers and securing the cloud.
The report also identified that people, not technology, were the top concern for most CISOs. 28 per cent stated that internal staff were the area they felt most vulnerable, followed closely by suppliers at 24 per cent.
Cloud and Internet of Things (IoT) devices were seen as the chief technological vulnerability, with 17 per cent citing it as their top concern, followed by mobile and ECOM.
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7 trends in advanced endpoint protection
After extensive testing of 10 advanced endpoint protection products, we have identified a series of broad industry trends:
1) Virus signatures are passé.
2) Tracking executable programs is so last year.
3) Can the product track privilege escalation or other credential spoofing?
4) Insider threats are more pernicious, and blocking them has become more compelling.
5) Data exfiltration is more popular than ever
6) Many tools are using big data and cloud-based analytics to track actual network behavior.
7) Attack reporting standards
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