I'm thinking I would have better luck taking my chances with fraudsters
What do we do when efforts to preserve our privacy are more of an intrusion than the potential lack of privacy? Take banks. We can all be the victims of identity theft and fraud. We need to be careful. So do banks. A generation ago, a few pieces of ID got a check cashed. No…
Never operate a computer without anti-virus software
Recent ransomware attacks highlight how appealing and lucrative these raids are to hackers. Ransomware is malicious software that installs itself on the computers on your network and encrypts all the files, making them inaccessible to your staff. On payment of the ransom, you typically receive a key consisting of a string of letters and numbers…
Your employees can inadvertently be a cybercriminal’s best friend
When breaking through an organization’s security defences, employees who create vulnerabilities are a cybercriminal’s best friend. While technical security safeguards are essential, employees continue to be the weakest link when it comes to protecting corporate information from cybercriminals of various shapes, sizes and motivations. Cybercriminals regularly convince inattentive employees, through a phishing attack, to engage…
Band-aid fixes create a terrible work environment. This happens when IS is viewed simply as a cost
In too many organizations, the delivery of information services (IS) is best described as a giant, never-ending version of the Whac-a-Mole arcade game. If this situation describes your organization, it is time to take action. As a technology problem pops up, just like the mole in the game, someone in the IS group whacks it…
Successful cyberattacks can cause the demise of your organization
Does paying attention to the risk of cyber attacks sound expensive, complicated and a distraction from your business plan? Are you burying your head in the sand and hoping that this risk will pass your organization by? As an incentive to act, recognize that successful cyberattacks can cause the demise of your organization by: A…
Democracies, even Canada, are beginning to wake up to the threats posed by China
In an end-of-year message to Canadians, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau warned that Beijing was playing democracies off against each other, suggesting the country might begin a much needed policy change to respond to China’s “coercive diplomacy.” Soon after, Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mélanie Joly, let it be known that the Trudeau government is developing…
Western societies need to develop a common and comprehensive understanding of its implications
Hybrid warfare has become a familiar phenomenon. But at a time of climate catastrophes and pandemics, booming technological innovation, geopolitical rivalry and a global reorganization of supply chains, hybrid scenarios below the threshold of war have gained enormous importance. While hybrid threats used to be the weapon of the weak, new technologies and their disruptive potential…
What was once purely academic has become a reality
Meat processing giant JBS recently paid out a US$11 million ransom following a cyber attack, according to reports. Most of its meatpacking facilities, including the one in Alberta, remained idle for a few days. Most of us link the concept of cyber attacks with information technology companies, governments and media. But experts have warned the…
When it comes to interoffice e-mails, most employees are under the impression that they can be more casual and informal
There have been hundreds of stories and several books published about the importance of crafting grammatical, well-thought-out, professional e-mails at work. Yet most people are still under the impression that different rules apply to e-mail. Discipline and planning go into writing letters and memos committed to paper, but most employees think they can be more…
Draconian responses did more to kill the economic, social, spiritual and educational lives of citizens than stop fatalities
Twenty-one years ago, the world panicked over an invisible, media-hyped enemy. That enemy was Y2K, a problem whose shadow was much larger than its substance. Unfortunately, COVID-19 may be this era’s equivalent of that ‘millennium bug.’ The Y2K problem was essentially this: many computers had two digits for dates. If they went to 00, the…