TECH TALK: It’s time to question traditional ways of working to curb threats, says BILL MAGEE
Insider risk continues to pose the greatest threat to the online security of organisations, a data breach survey reveals. Hitting key sectors such as financial services, legal and healthcare, you might think nothing unusual there and ,of course, you’d be right. Yet things are changing.
The marketplace has always been notoriously camera-shy when it comes to admitting to such breaches and understandably so, given twin pressure points of commercial confidentiality across the board along with fears of tipping off competitors of a perceived weakness.
However, a piece of research has shown an overwhelming 94% admit they’ve been hit during the COVID pandemic.
Covid has forced matters to the surface. Expect others to similarly break silence in the months ahead as apprehension grows over how best to secure often highly-sensitive information in such uncertain economic times.
It comes as the marketplace is warned it faces the threat of a “digital dark age” given the largely unfettered wall-to-wall online storage of our data. More on that in a bit..
The survey in question by Egress Software involved 500 IT leaders and 3,000 staff. Along with the nine-out-of-ten disclosure, it warns of a “disconnect” between employer and employee that can only be recovered by implementing an effective digital strategy.
We’re not talking about only staff being at fault. Bosses can be just as culpable: lack of proper training, malicious acts and human error where the wrong link is clicked, a mistake made, a rule broken. It can also, often unwittingly, involve contractors or business associates.
It’s time to question traditional ways of working to curb threats that can involve fraud, theft of intellectual property, or sabotage of computer systems. The warning signs are out there..
British Medical Journal reports the healthcare sector is “drowning in data” in a situation where the pandemic has rewritten the rules on accessing and using patient information.
Thomson Reuters researchers highlight data privacy fears over financial firms moving to the cloud, especially when it comes to achieving a balance between public and private clouds.
Law Society of Scotland points out IT legacy systems, some dating back decades, still remain deeply ingrained in many legal firms, so it is imperative online security systems are kept up-to-date.
A Gartner global study recommends a multimodal IT approach involving an inextricable-linking of Cloud services and DevOps, as a more automated operation and faster delivery all round.
Baking multimodal into tech systems builds on a more granular and bottom-up view throughout an organisation based on its particular characteristics, producing a Cloud-first business balancing stability versus agility to deliver value for clients.
Unfortunately, this often represents a far bigger challenge for many than first thought and an organisation shouldn’t hesitate to bring in outside help if needed.
Back to that *dark age” claim that was made by American internet pioneer Vinton Cerf, vice-president and chief internet evangelist for Google, also US Presidential Medal of Freedom and Turing Award recipient, and co-chair of Campus Party Silicon Valley along with Al Gore and Tim Berners-Lee.
Cerf warned an Internet Society webinar of wide-ranging risks due to a “digital obsolescence” where we’re in danger of falling into a “black hole” even a “dark age” with ubiquitous digital storage of text and data images, music and much more besides, lost for ever.
He questions our ability to securely store, long term, and achieve continued reliable access to the vast stores of present-day and historical digital data and associated programs, operating systems and computers.
ScotlandIS has launched a timely “Cyber UpSkilling Fund” at no cost to a business, financed through the Scottish Government’s national transition training fund and aimed at boosting job opportunities to drive growth within the country’s cyber sector.
Employees, aged 25 or over, can develop skills and progress their career whilst enabling new junior roles or vacancies to be created in their place. Hopefully, this will simultaneously nurture the workforce to make it potentially less likely to suffer a costly insider breach.
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