Author: Amanda

Can you feel it? We are just on the cusp of change. The summer is almost done, the children will soon return to school and the business world will crank back up to full speed.

When you look back on your summer of 2016, those couple of weeks you managed to get away from it all, did you manage a quiet jog along the beach or the seafront and tell yourself that cyber security doesn’t really matter. The connection between cyber security and a quiet seaside town may seem unlikely but in fact, it’s quite the opposite.

A few of our seaside towns are the landing points for the vast undersea cables that physically connect the UK to the rest of the world. The internet, with both its good and bad points, just like invaders and settlers of the past, arrive on the beaches. The locations of these cables are, for obvious reasons, kept as secret as possible so there is precious little chance of you tripping over one, or your youngest offspring chopping through these double-armoured cables with an overly energetic use of a plastic bucket and spade combo. 

These cables are an intrinsic part of the UK national infrastructure, which in itself is a collection of assets, facilities, systems and networks that if lost or compromised would have a major detrimental effect of the integrity and delivery of essential services. At some point in the past, a list was drawn up, scenarios were played out, and protection was put in place accordingly. As the internet is now a critical communications and trading network, it is no surprise that this is as important as other infrastructure assets, such as food supply, energy and emergency services… 

Still trying to get the conversation started on cyber security? Then ask the CPNI for advice. 

 

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.

The next twelve months will bring more change to cyber security, but it's always been that way with technology.

It’s difficult not to reflect at this time of year, over the situations, events and experiences that have punctuated your life over the last fifty weeks or so. Technology, in all its forms, continues to evolve a fact that is not exactly new, but one that sometimes just requires renewed acknowledgement.

When I received my first ever computer back in the mid 1980’s I thought that the pinnacle of technological achievement had been reached. In my mind, there was no way that it could be improved. I completed it with a range of peripherals and developed it into my teenage self’s version of ‘mission control’. Within a scant few months, the unstoppable evolution of technology had progressed and I had been disappointing left behind.

This trend has not ceased and has no signs of ever changing pace, meaning that even after thirty years of chasing the leading edge of technology, I will be forever caught in its wake.

The entire technological ecosystem that comprises cyber security is not impervious to this trend of perpetual progress and continual change and for me, there have been a few stand out developments that require acknowledgement.

 

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.

It appears that all the building blocks are now in place to tackle the threat of cyber security.

The IT industry is not one known for looking back in the misguided sense that things were better in its past. Why? Because they weren’t. Some of us ‘computer boomers’ from the 1980s may have dewy-eyed memories of our first Sinclair Spectrum or Commodore 64 but if truth be known they were severely restricted in all elements of computing.

Therefore, we look forward to what is next. The forthcoming release of software, the speed hikes in processor speed, the continual expansion of storage, the increasingly vivid graphics and the stunning sound reproduction that comes out of the hunks of aluminium and glass that adorn our desks.

But is this wise? Would it be a useful exercise to sometimes just pause, take a breath, assimilate all the information that has passed through our inboxes and see if we are perhaps further forward that we thought we were…

 

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.

Working in the cyber industry is to work in an atmosphere of professional pessimism.

As the medical industry puts more and more services online do they need a healthy dose of pessimism just to be on the safe side? 

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.

In order to preserve your schools cyber reputation, be a bit more like Bilderberg. Lock yourselves away and have a chat under the Chatham House Rule.

Back in early June there were a few news reports that the annual conference of the highly secretive Bilderberg Group was to take place in Austria. The event, first held at the Hotel De Bilderberg in the Netherlands in 1954, describes itself as an "annual conference designed to foster dialogue between Europe and North America". This conference, attended by high ranking officials from politics, government, finance, business and the media is held under the Chatham House Rule, which states that participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity, nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor of any other participant may be revealed.

Read more, visit the National Cyber Skills Centre: Cyber Insights

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.

 

 

 

Celebrity culture has a striking similarity to cyber security, in that many wish to avoid it, ignore it and hope it will just go away however its natural tenacity somehow always breaks through and permeates into our everyday life. Rather than ignore the celebrity culture a particular ongoing issue may be able to teach us all a valuable lesson with regard to reputational damage caused when sensitive information leaks out into the public consciousness.

 

Putting a price on the damage caused to an organisation's reputation due to a cyber incident, cyber breach, or other compromise is almost incalculable. Talk Talk, who was lasts years UK poster child for cyber-related incidents, has suffered terribly, even though they have been doing their level best to improve their security, build customer confidence and generally try to put the past behind them. Is it working? Not yet, the name Talk Talk and cyber breach are joined at the hip. It seems that there is nothing they can do, just plug away and hopefully over time, probably a long time, their reputation will improve. For Talk Talk it must feel that it would be far easier to ‘unstir’ jam out of rice pudding than to reobtain the public standing they had less than 12 months ago.

If celebrity culture has taught business one lesson, it’s that no matter what you do when a reputation is damaged due to a ‘data breach’ it stays damaged for a long, long time… 

 

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.

Pick up any product and somewhere on its underbelly, you will find a range of what appears to be modern hieroglyphics. These are not strategically placed emoji giving off some hidden meaning, nor are they the hiding place for a particularly awkward Pokemon, they are, of course, certification badges.

These badges are there to give the consumer confidence that a level of testing has been done to ensure that this particular product will not harm the user in any way, assuming that it is used within the guidelines laid down by the manufacturer. The most recognisable of these inscriptions is the ‘Kitemark;, introduced in 1903 as the British Standards Mark for use on tramway rails. As the BSI quote on their website “Having a BSI Kitemark associated with a product or service confirms that it conforms to a particular standard”…

 

Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a ‘Kitemark’ style voluntary scheme for Cyber Security, Oh wait, there is!  

 

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.

Oh dear, don’t you just hate it? April 1st is almost upon us, so that gives individuals, businesses and the media carte blanche authority to do their best to trick us into thinking something is true when it isn’t. There is a long list of ‘famous’ April fools, from spaghetti growing on trees through to the introduction of ‘smellyvision’. In the past these can be seen as harmless jokes, but what if there was a more sinister motive behind a 21st century Aprils fool regarding cyber security and its heinous sidekick, social engineering.

Cyber security has long been considered a predominantly technical issue. There are vulnerabilities in technology that are taken advantage of by a range of actors and then the technology catches up through implementation of good practise, the application of patches, the mitigation of viruses and then the circle begins again. The human factor is now as important, if not more so than any technical aspects of cyber security. This point has not been lost on cyber criminals who are now using all the social engineering tools they have to find ways to separate individuals from valuable digital information. 

Nobody likes to be hustled, to be conned, to be made a fool of by social engineers. So don’t let it happen…

 

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.

What advice does a genuine expert give on cybersecurity?

 

When the political history books are written the comment by the former Justice Secretary, Michael Gove given during the Brexit campaign that “Britain has had enough of experts” may just be his professional epitaph.

I disagree with Mr Gove on this point and that when making decisions of great magnitude the wise course of action to take is to assimilate the facts from experts in the particular field of interest in order to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion.

It is however relatively rare that you get to ask such an expert and when the opportunity arises it has to be taken. Fortunately for me such an opportunity arose earlier this week at the Cheltenham Literature Festival. The annual festival brings together a wide variety of authors, some well knowns, others less so into a ten-day smorgasbord of literary themed events. One such event was titled ‘How Big Is Big Brother’ and covered off the topic of how intelligence agencies have to balance surveillance with civil liberties.

Hosted by the philosopher Julian Baggini, the former Chair of the UK Intelligence and Security Committee, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, explained how this fine balance was struck. Having been in the most senior positions of government, including Secretary of State for Defence, he has intimate knowledge of the threats that the UK faced. Obviously I wondered what his view would be on the current threat from cybercrime, cyber terrorism and other cyber related issues. Sadly, I couldn’t ask him during the Q&A session at the event, but did grab a few words with him afterwards,

 

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.

 

Are customer records from morally questionable companies a new weapon in cyber crime?

The news agenda has now moved on. The story of the Ashley Madison hack has now been relegated to further down the news league of stories, garnering nothing more than an arbitrary mention alongside other reports of hacks, breaches and cyber related incidents.

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.