Fear Hackers? First invest in an IT security culture change

January 14, 2015 / G C Network / Comments Off on Fear Hackers? First invest in an IT security culture change

Quantum Computing Delivered From The Cloud

By G C Network | March 6, 2017

Photo credit: Shutterstock IBM Cloud is now providing developers with the infrastructure and portal to a 5 qubit quantum computer. This equips them with the ability to build interfaces between…

Connections Redefining the Enterprise Network

By G C Network | February 23, 2017

Photo credit: Shutterstock The computer and the network that connects them are both inextricably linked to the success of any business.  This truth is at the heart of our contemporary…

Business Chatbots Taking Over

By G C Network | February 9, 2017

Chat apps characteristics make them very appealing to businesses and marketers. Prominent ones include their size, user retention, usage rates, and user demographics. In fact, the combined user base of…

NCTA CloudMASTER®: The Path To Your Future

By G C Network | January 31, 2017

In 2016, cloud computing started to dominate many IT market segments. As a business, Synergy Research Group reported that industry revenue for the four quarters ended Sept. 30 grew 25%.…

Cybersecurity in the President Trump Administration

By G C Network | January 29, 2017

From the rise of increasingly capable nation-states—like Iran and North Korea—conducting destructive attacks against American private sector companies, to the continuing pace of IP theft by China striking at the…

Creating Your Digital Strategy

By G C Network | January 20, 2017

Photo credit: Shutterstock For many corporations, welcoming the New Year also heralds the season of strategy development and budget distribution. This year, however, companies of all sizes are struggling with…

CloudMASTER® Pays Well In The US Great Northwest

By G C Network | January 17, 2017

The City of Beaverton is located seven miles west of Portland, Oregon, in the Tualatin River Valley, It encompasses 19.6 square miles, and is home to more than 95,000 residents.…

NATO ACT “Art of the Possible” Interoperability Demonstration

By G C Network | January 7, 2017

GovCloud Network is proud to have served as the Program Manager for the NATO Allied Command Transformation, “Art of the Possible” Interoperability Demonstration on December 16, 2016. supporting the The…

Olisipo Can Make You A CloudMASTER®

By G C Network | December 29, 2016

Olisipo Learning in Portugal has a culture that is based on the constant search for new challenges. Recognized by their clients as the “Best HR Supplier”, they have placed more…

What is Your 2017 Business Strategy?

By G C Network | December 26, 2016

Photo credit: Shutterstock End of year predictions in December are as predictable as tomorrow’s sunrise, but a recent video on 2017 Technology Trends helped me really understand how important a…

by
Kevin L.Jackson

 With all the news these days about cyberterrorism and hacking the cloud may seem like the last place you would want to put your precious information. Pew Research has even suggested that cyber-attacks are likely to increase. Some 61% of over 1600 security expert respondents to a recent survey said “yes” that a major attack causing widespread harm would occur by 2025,according to the Pew Research study. The cold hard fact, however, is that fear of the cyberterrorist and hackers, while definitely valid, is mostly misplaced.  I hold this contrarian view, because when you pull back the curtain on many of the recent breaches, you’ll likely see a mirror!

In a recent case, sensitive data including passwords seem to have been stored in the clear which is against all recommended best practices. There also may have been significant involvement from a company insider.  Focusing on application hacks, some of the most devastating have been due to a failure of the application developers to follow some basic best practices for application development.  Another important fact is that most of these breaches were not on cloud service providers.  These successful attacks were on enterprise built and managed IT infrastructures.

Our failure to protect our information and data is mostly due to our less than focused attitude towards cybersecurity.  Policies, procedures and processes play an important part in preventing security incidents but more is needed.  Every organizational employee must realize that they could be an entry point for hackers and be aware of their individual actions.  IT professionals must follow industry standard best practices for application development, network configuration, system configuration, etc. Many of which have gone through multiple iterations over the years. Everyone must also be proactive in their identification and response to cyber threats.  What I am describing is the need for a cultural change.

Creating a risk-conscious and security-aware culture is key to protecting an organization’s information infrastructure and data assets, risk management expert John P. Pironti wrote in 2012 ISACA Journal article. Business leaders must begin viewing information security as a benefit, rather than as an obstacle, and employ threat and vulnerability analysis – rather than fear and doubt – to drive adoption of points of view and controls

So let us first focus on changing our IT security culture. That will give us the edge we need in order to prevail over the cyber underworld.  We also must adopt a “trust-but-verify approach to monitoring and oversight of organizational and employee activities”. This would involve the adoption and expansion of automated security control point monitoring and reporting.  This, in fact, is a strength of any well designed and implemented cloud computing platform.

(This post was written as part of the Dell Insight Partners program, which provides news and analysis about the evolving world of tech. To learn more about tech news and analysis visit Tech Page One. Dell sponsored this article, but the opinions are our own and don’t necessarily represent Dell’s positions or strategies.)

Cloud Musings

( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS – © Copyright Kevin L. Jackson 2012)

Follow me at https://Twitter.com/Kevin_Jackson
Posted in

G C Network

Cloud Computing

Cybersecurity