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

Packing My Bags For Prague and Dimension Data #Perspectives2015

By G C Network | May 15, 2015

Prague is a beautiful city!  My last time was in June 2010 when Jeremy Geelan invited me to speak at CloudExpo Europe (see my blog post and video from that…

SAP/HANA Does Big Data for National Security

By G C Network | May 13, 2015

Carmen Krueger, SAP NS2 SVP & GM While SAP is globally renowned as a provider of enterprise management software, the name is hardly ever associated with the spooky world of…

Be future ready: Selling to millennials and a marketplace of one

By G C Network | May 12, 2015

There is almost a deafening discussion going on about the self-centeredness of today’s young adults. Weather you call them Generation Y, millennials or twenty-somethings, the general refrain seems to be…

Surviving an Environment of IT Change

By G C Network | May 8, 2015

  “The Federal government today is in the midst of a revolution. The revolution is challenging the norms of government by introducing new ways of serving the people. New models…

OmniTI and GovCloud Join Forces to Provide Cloud-based Services

By G C Network | May 5, 2015

FULTON, Md.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–OmniTI, a leading provider of web infrastructures and applications for companies that require scalable, high-performance, mission critical solutions, today announced that it has partnered with GovCloud Network, LLC…

Cloud microservices make their play

By G C Network | April 29, 2015

 by Kevin L. Jackson Cloud computing seems destined to be the way enterprises will use information technology. The drastic cost reductions and impressive operational improvements make the transition an unstoppable trend.…

Tweeps Are People Too!!

By G C Network | April 25, 2015

I woke up this morning to the devastating news about the earthquake in Nepal. Sitting here in California  that destruction is literally on the other side of the world but…

The CISO role in cybersecurity: Solo or team sport?

By G C Network | April 14, 2015

The average length of time in the commercial sector between a network security breach and when the detection of that breach is more than 240 days, according to Gregory Touhill, deputy…

Setting standards for IoT can capitalize on future growth

By G C Network | March 30, 2015

by Melvin Greer Managing Director Greer Institute for Leadership and Innovation The adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) appears to be unquestioned. Advances in wearables and sensors are strategic to…

Women in tech: Meet the trailblazers of STEM equality

By G C Network | March 19, 2015

By Sandra K. Johnson CEO, SKJ Visioneering, LLC   Science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) professionals are drivers of innovation,creativity and invention. STEM disciplines are significant drivers of economies worldwide,…

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