How To Keep Your Business Data Safe
One of the US’s leading experts on cybersecurity says all businesses are vulnerable to hacking. But he also asserts that there are ways to protect sensitive data.
Col. Cedric Leighton, military analyst for CNN and former National Security Agency deputy training director, spoke Wednesday 27th September, at Bank of Utah’s Fall Speaker Event in Lehi about managing cybersecurity risk in any industry.
“I hope to increase awareness of cybersecurity issues so companies will think defensively in the cybersecurity realm. You need to realise every time you have a connection to the Internet you increase your vulnerability,” Leighton said in an interview after the event. “It is also equally important that you understand how to defend yourself pro-actively.”
His message during the presentation conveyed a sense of urgency for industries to adapt this “proactive defense” mentality. Citing pertinent examples of hacking, including the most recent news about Expedia, Leighton said the United States is in the midst of a cyber war.
“Data has become the world’s most valuable resources and the new data economy absolutely needs to be secured,” he said.
He refers to places like China, North Korea and Russia as nation-state hackers. These countries are blatantly working on massive hacking programs to further their goals of both economic and world dominance, Leighton said. He explained that the hacking is not just technical, but a psychological social engineering issue as well.
“Hackers engage in psychological manipulation. That’s what they do,” he said, using examples of hackers planting stories on new websites and hacker bots buying advertising on Facebook for political posturing. “It’s more about what actually happens in people’s minds.”
Leighton said he estimates the cost of hacking globally to be $2 trillion annually, with as much as half being the cost to the United States alone. He firmly believes cyber threats, combined with artificial intelligence and physical attacks, are the next frontier of global warfare.
To combat all of this, Leighton suggested public-private partnerships between government and businesses to create a “resilient cyber infrastructure,” and develop national cyber strategy. Companies also individually need to be creative, and “understand the threat vectors are many and varied.” Because of this, they need to reach out to specialists who have specialised in protecting those specific threat areas.
Leighton also cautioned business leaders in attendance of the biggest open door to their businesses, phishing scams.
Hackers have become highly sophisticated at pretending to be colleagues or friends in sending email messages. But their messages have malware links or PDFs that appear innocent. To combat this sanitisation software has been proven to be the most effective way to combat this within organisations.
Still, once businesses have proactively fortified their data security, the job still isn’t done.
“Even if you do all these things, it becomes a continuous process, because the attack vectors change all the time,” Leighton said. “The key watchword there is proactivity.”
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