Author: Amanda

Even back in the 80’s when I was hammering out BASIC on my Sinclair Spectrum my Grandfather was bemused by the onslaught of computers and their potentially disrupting effects on society. The same expression is being increasingly used towards cyber security.

In order to try and quell the fears of a desolate cyber future the answer may lie in the lessons learned from the development of sat navs.

Read more over at Cyber Insights, brought to you by the National Cyber Skills Centre 

Certes specialise in IT staffing for all sectors and industries. We are now working with the National Cyber Skills Centre in order to provide staffing to companies in need of cyber security. For cyber security jobs Click here.

If you could sit down and have a face to face open conversation with a cyber criminal what do you think they would tell you?

 

How did it all start?

I can’t say that it was a planned career move or anything like that, in fact quite the opposite. Maybe more a case of ‘right place at the right time?’ But even that sounds wrong. Perhaps myself and the others are just members of the disenfranchised millennials who found that traditional IT work was relatively mundane and our more modern technical skill sets were totally undervalued in the offers of employment we had, so we looked elsewhere.

What you have to remember is that so much of cyber crime goes unreported due to its relatively low value. I mean companies can lose £200 here, £1000 there, it’s not going to bring them down, but the time and effort it will take them to investigate it, report it, is too much for the value of what they have lost. Is this just ‘luck’ on their part? Of course not, it’s designed that way. Our focus is not about stealing £100,000,000 from one company, but a few thousand pounds from a few thousand companies. The beauty of cyber crime is that it scales…

 

Read the rest over at Cyber Insights, brought to you by the National Cyber Skills Centre.

Certes specialise in IT staffing for all sectors and industries. We are now working with the National Cyber Skills Centre in order to provide staffing to companies in need of cyber security. For cyber security jobs, Click here.

In 1964 as the then Cassius Clay beat the fearsome Sonny Liston, his eyes became bright and his voice pushed out a message that was compelling. “I shook up the world”, he cried, “I shook up the world”. From here he changed his name to Muhammad Ali and continued to change the world. He was a disruptor, loved by many, loathed by others, but there is no doubt about how he changed things.

In 2004 Muhammad Ali appeared in an IBM commercial, regarding Linux, encouraging those who adopted this ‘new’ open source operating system to go and do something great, go and disrupt, go and push technology forward for all humanities sake. This cry, this call to arms is never more relevant than today. We need some serious technology disruption in order to stem the increasing threat from cyber crime, but where is it going to come from? 

The world needs a technology disruptor to shake up the world and become the Uber of cyber security.

 

Read the rest over at Cyber Insights, brought to you by the National Cyber Skills Centre.

Certes specialise in IT staffing for all sectors and industries. We are now working with the National Cyber Skills Centre in order to provide staffing to companies in need of cyber security. For cyber security jobs, Click here.

So it’s happened. You really had hoped that it wouldn’t, but hope has let you down and you have run out of luck. A cyber breach has occurred, data has gone, you are not sure how, when or by whom. Your mind now starts to wonder if this was an attack, or perhaps a disgruntled employee? – after all you have just completed the latest round of HR reviews and some people were disappointed with the pay rise that was offered – What’s going to happen now? Do you tell your customers? Do you tell your suppliers? Should you be drafting a statement to put on your website? Perhaps you need to gather all the staff and talk to them, but then what will they say? Damn, you had been warned this might happen. It’s a mess and it’s going to get messier.

If that happened to you, what would you do? Have you ever wondered? Many companies have a critical incident policy in place that can be acted on should the worst happen, but precious few have one in place for cyber. 

So, who would you call in to investigate it? 

Read more over at Cyber Insights, brought to you by the National Cyber Skills Centre.

Certes specialise in IT staffing for all sectors and industries. We are now working with the National Cyber Skills Centre in order to provide staffing to companies in need of cyber security. For cyber security jobs Click here.

What are you up to today? Anything nice? When the alarm went off at silly o'clock this morning did you jump out of bed, run 5 miles, eat a perfectly balanced breakfast and then get into the office early to continue your journey up the career ladder? If you did, then congratulations I’m right behind you. What about your boss, what get's them up and moving this morning? Or your work colleagues, or your friends? Essentially what is your motivation?

Although many will find it difficult to admit the motivation is usually money. Making enough money to live a relatively comfortable life – depending on what your definition of that is. You will put up with a few stresses, annoyances and complications just as long as at the end of the month your pay packet arrives. Did you know that a cyber-criminal is motivated by the same? The vast majority of cyber-crimes are financially motivated. Sure there are those intent on a morale crusade, and there are the state-sponsored attacks but scour any statistical report that is looking into the motivation behind cyber-attacks and it all comes down to making money.

Cyber criminals are more motivated to steal from you, then you are to prevent them. 

 

Read the rest over at Cyber Insights, brought to you by the National Cyber Skills Centre.

Certes specialise in IT staffing for all sectors and industries. We are now working with the National Cyber Skills Centre in order to provide staffing to companies in need of cyber security. For cyber security jobs Click here.

I hate to point out the obvious, but you are not going to solve your cyber security issues on your own.

I’m sure you’d like too, I know you’d like to think that it will just be ‘dealt with’ and you can go on running your business and not have to worry about the nefarious individuals and groups whose life’s work appears to be disruption, destruction and distress at the press of a button. But you are not going to do it. 

When it comes to tackling cyber security, collaboration is the answer. 

Read more over at Cyber Insights, brought to you by the National Cyber Skills Centre 

Certes specialise in IT staffing for all sectors and industries. We are now working with the National Cyber Skills Centre in order to provide staffing to companies in need of cyber security. For cyber security jobs Click here.

How many times will you suffer from a cyber attack before you actually take real action? The answer is probably three.

“How many times have I got to tell you to stop doing that before you will learn?” would often be heard around my childhood home, as I’m sure it was in yours and probably in your children’s if truth be known.

Like you and probably like your children too, I didn’t listen. I decided to learn in my own way, under my own misplaced guidance. Somehow I had to find out for myself, irrespective of the consequences, which in many childhood instances would be cuts, bruises and a wide collection of grazes!

It seems that no matter how much advice we are given, how many people who are more learned than ourselves give us practical and insightful assistance, we still like to find out for ourselves, even if the costs are high. 

While in discussions at the National Cyber Skills Centre this week, it was mentioned that these childhood desires to ‘find out for ourselves’ continues into modern business life and more notably cyber security. Despite cyber security costing companies many millions, despite millions of individuals losing personal data, despite the headlines of notable brands suffering major hacks and data breaches, it still is not enough to spur many into action…

Read the rest over at Cyber Insights, brought to you by the National Cyber Skills Centre.

Certes specialise in IT staffing for all sectors and industries. We are now working with the National Cyber Skills Centre in order to provide staffing to companies in need of cyber security. For cyber security jobs, Click here.

Is the risk of cyber a bit overblown? Is it a lot of computing types telling us that the world will cave in at a moments notice just to ensure that they can sell technical ‘snake oil’ remedies to keep the bad guys hands off your digital crown jewels? Where is the risk?

It’s in the software that you use all the time – but exactly how much software do you use? Have you ever actually made a little list of the amount of software that is prevalent in your life today and how much there may be in the not to distant future?

Make a list of your own software use and decide for yourself; you may be in for a surprise.

Read more over at Cyber Insights, brought to you by the National Cyber Skills Centre 

Certes specialise in IT staffing for all sectors and industries. We are now working with the National Cyber Skills Centre in order to provide staffing to companies in need of cyber security. For cyber security jobs Click here.

How do you go about building a better mousetrap? This question is often thrown out at a range of meetings, from school Design & Technology lessons, through to corporate strategy and team building gatherings. Is the mousetrap a perfect resolution to the threat of vermin infestation? Can it be done better?

This question is actually not about the mousetrap at all and when it is posed the ensuing discussion usually arrives at the conclusion that in order to build a better mousetrap you firstly require a genuine passion for the eradication of mice.

Does cyber security need just a little more passion?

 

Read the rest over at Cyber Insights, brought to you by the National Cyber Skills Centre.

Certes specialise in IT staffing for all sectors and industries. We are now working with the National Cyber Skills Centre in order to provide staffing to companies in need of cyber security. For cyber security jobs, Click here.

Many successful cyber criminals have one particular personal trait. Patience; and patience pays.

Being brought up in a rural community in on the Worcestershire / Gloucestershire border, life had a less frantic pace than the images of life and business that permeated into our living room from the TV. It was quiet, it was peaceful. To live here you had to learn something. You had to learn how to be patient…

A cyber criminal, a successful cyber criminal, is patient. They are not a hacktavist or a hacker, they are not the ones that are motivated by disruption or the advancing of a political, or ideological ideal. They are an old fashioned planner but with access to technology. They are calm, unassuming with a high level of technical skills. You can even have a sneaking respect for them. In an age of personality and where instant gratification is the reward for extroverted attitudes, the patient individual can be overlooked, almost dismissed. You dismiss these criminals at your peril.  

 

Read more over at Cyber Insights, brought to you by the National Cyber Skills Centre.

Certes specialise in IT staffing for all sectors and industries. We are now working with the National Cyber Skills Centre in order to provide staffing to companies in need of cyber security. For cyber security jobs Click here.