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

NPR on Cloud Computing

By G C Network | August 29, 2008

You know it’s important when NPR covers it !! On the “All Things Consider” radio show, NPR took a look into cloud computing. I’m not sure if Computing In The…

Sun Federal Cloud Computing eBook

By G C Network | August 28, 2008

Sun Federal now has it’s ebook on cloud computing available for all. The website doesn’t really offer any new information, but it does highlight how Sun Federal is targeting the…

Amazon Elastic Block Store

By G C Network | August 27, 2008

Last week, with their announcement of Elastic Block Store, Amazon has made enterprise class storage in the cloud a reality. According to Dion Hinchcliffe of Ziff Davis,”Elastic Block Store finally…

HP CTO On the Future

By G C Network | August 26, 2008

In a recent Web Guild article, Shane Robinson, Chief Strategy & Technology Office for HP outilined his belief that we are in the early stages of a major shift. As…

Google serves as first line of defense during Russia’s invasion of Georgia (A plug for the cloud)

By G C Network | August 25, 2008

As reported by the Christian Science Monitor, “As Georgian troops retreated to defend their capital from Russian attack, the websites of their government, also under fire, retreated to Google. In…

Apptis and Servervault announce Fedcloud

By G C Network | August 22, 2008

On August 18th, Apptis announced a partnership with ServerVault to offer a trusted cloud computing environment to federal agencies. Called Fedcloud they are offering a federally compliant, on-demand infrastructure that…

SOA-R Educational Series Schedule Changes

By G C Network | August 21, 2008

Since launching the SOA-R series back in July, cloud computing has become a hot topic among national security professionals. Evidence of this high level of interest is obvious from the…

Comments from Mr. Robert Carey, DON CIO and Army COS General George W. Casey, Jr

By G C Network | August 20, 2008

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve had the distinct pleasure to listen to both Mr. Robert Carey, CIO, Department of the Navy, and General George W. Casey, Jr., Chief…

Akamai at SOA-R Session

By G C Network | August 19, 2008

Had another very enlightening SOA-R session last week. Of particular note to me was Akamai’s vision of cloud computing. As presented by Fran Trently, Sr. Director Public Sector, Akamai is…

Six Benefits of Cloud Computing

By G C Network | August 18, 2008

A Public CIO magazine article, to be published later this fall, will highlight six main benefits of cloud computing. Reduced Cost Increased Storage Highly Automated Flexibility More Mobility Allows IT…

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.)

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