Category: Blogs

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.

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.

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.

As somebody who is creative by nature, I have often been accused of having my head in the clouds. Was I ahead of my time? As you can’t avoid the term ‘cloud computing’ no matter how hard you try. Companies now offer ‘cloud services’ and you can do ‘cloud backup’ or ‘cloud collaboration’. Apple has iCloud, Google has a suite of cloud-based products, from Gmail to Google Docs. Evernote, Dropbox and more are all living in the cloud. No matter where you are, no matter what device you are using, you can get access to your data as long as it all lives in the cloud. 

Does moving to cloud services mean you need to worry less about cyber security? Sadly not.

 

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.

How much are you willing to invest in securing your corporate data? Maybe that depends on how it’s being stored.

Just for a moment suspend your understanding on how data storage mediums have increased in capacity during last quarter of a century or so. Imagine that we hit ‘peak storage technology’ with that plucky little device known as the 3.5” floppy disk drive.

Although they have now been long forgotten, with the exception that their icon is still mysteriously used for the save function in MS Office, or are used as ironic coasters in IT departments around the globe, these devices once held the most sensitive and valuable data that companies had.

One of the big challenges for all those in cyber security is to try and make the intangibility of vast quantities of data tangible, so that appropriate controls and mechanisms can be put in place to preserve and protect it. As almost everybody in middle to senior management today will have some recollection or awareness of a 3.5” floppy disk then it is a handy reference point for me to use in the following rather silly example – but please stay with me on this…

 

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’s time to change the course of your cyber security strategy and point it in the direction of GDPR

Back in December 2016 the UK Government published a policy paper titled “Cyber Security Regulation and Incentives Review”, did you read it? Probably not.

In that document one of the recommendations was, and I quote “Government will therefore seek to improve cyber risk management in the wider economy through its implementation of the forthcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The breach reporting requirements and fines that can be issued under GDPR will represent a significant call to action for industry”.

That was the moment that the entire cyber security industry, in the UK, slowly started to correct its course. Having had many conversations within the confines of the National Cyber Skills Centre, there were concerns that despite all the statistics, all the warnings and all the front page headlines regarding cyber crime that the UK business community were not addressing this issue…

 

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 advice that was prevalent last year, although valid, has been superseded as the harsh realisation of cyber risks finally permeates the boardrooms across the world. I don’t intentionally keep a diary of the advancement of the cyber security industry, like many others I seemingly get carried along on this wave of innovation, technology, regulation and worry. 

As the cyber security market continues to mature, new tools are being recommended to mitigate the losses of cyber crime. 

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.

A mere six months ago you were a small ‘widget’ manufacturer based in the West Midlands. A family business, now in its third generation. The company had provided well for you and your family for as long as you can remember. You prided yourself on your craft and the high quality of your workmanship. Then something changed.

It’s all a bit of a blur now, but you were approached by a major brand in the USA to make a small well-engineered sensor for a forthcoming market changing gadget. You jumped through all the hoops, all the due diligence and then ramped up production to meet this amazing opportunity.

The problem is that as a sub-contractor for ‘that client’ your company has now attracted the attention of others who are determined to learn the details of your design, understand your contract with ‘the client’ and see if in any way you are a weak link in a supply chain that if compromised would embarrass ‘the client’ who is one of the worlds most respected companies. Their determination has paid off, you have been breached and data that was labelled ‘company confidential’ and contained both your intellectual property and that of ‘the client’ is now starting to surface on the dark recesses of the un-Googled web.

It’s time to come clean, it’s time to admit to this failing, it’s time to let those who need to know : know. But who are you going to tell? And exactly what are you going to tell them? Welcome to the world of crisis communications, the prepared public mouthpiece of a cyber breach.

Suffered a cyber attack? Are you ready to face the music?

 

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.

Few business people outside of IT departments have any knowledge of current information security threats. Time to have a chat with your IT suppliers.

Last week one of the stalwarts of the IT trade press, Computer Weekly, ran a story stating that few business people outside of IT departments have any knowledge of current information security threats. This isn’t a surprise to me; in fact IT in general is in many organisations still seen as ‘below stairs’. Despite the efforts of Apple in its retail stores that all IT people are open, friendly and cool generation X types, the reality is that It is most IT departments still suffer a bit of an image problem. Therefore any warnings, suggestions, advice and concerns that they raise are potentially somewhat tainted. 

For more information 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.

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.