Cybersecurity Threats in the Age of IoT

Cybersecurity has become one of the most talked about issues in recent times due to the massive amounts of hacking stories that have taken place over the last few years. We can all clearly remember the massive Target hack and the security breach at Equifax which comprised almost everyone’s information.

Everybody can appreciate cybersecurity and, in this current climate, must be knowledgeable of it. More and more of the world is becoming interconnected and more and more people are going online. This poses a huge security risk as data from millions of people will, paradoxically, become more secure and more vulnerable simultaneously. This is cause for great alarm as the full reach of what a cybersecurity flaw can produce is still not entirely known. The Equifax hack would be a sure indicator that, at the very least, it isn’t good.

Not everyone can be sure what will happen but this, of course, cannot get in the way or inhibit progress in any way. Oddly, these two things must act in perfect harmony. We must have consistent and eager progress while maintaining the risk despite our concerns.

This issue does not become any less complex in the Internet of Things. This new incoming age brings with it all kinds of intricate ways that hackers and other exploitative programs can deceive and infiltrate our personal data. During the tech revolution, there are a few things to be acutely aware of in order to prevent a total collapse of your privacy.

The Internet of Things brings with it many innovations that can not only assist us in our lives but can change our lives altogether. Almost everyone has a smartphone and smart home assistants are already becoming ubiquitous. We have in our homes all sorts of devices that are constantly listening and watching us better our lives and make living easier in general. We collectively love these devices as they can keep us in order and drive us closer to a future present only in our dreams.

However, these come with the risks that all electronically inclined and connected objects do. For instance, say an individual has a smart home alarm system with a customized 5 digit security code that has all the bells and whistles. All it takes is someone compromising your network security or interacting with a security camera in your home to grab that passcode and have access to your house, alarm free.

The same goes for Apple Pay which, while secure, is one broad hack away from leaving your personal banking information subject to the view of a criminal. When most of our electronics that record our voices submit what they heard to their engine they usually convert it into text. This text can then be absconded with by a criminal who can use this information against you. These, for better or for worse, are not even the harshest ways we can be compromised.

The tried-and-true formula, of course, still reigns true and that is most individuals do not protect their passwords. Over 80% of all hacks are completed using social exploits, which is to say that somebody lies in order to obtain information.

Sometimes a hack can occur from the silliest mistake, like leaving your password on a sticky note on your computer or written plainly on your desk so you can quickly remember your login. These mistakes, combined with the Internet of Things, put you at an even bigger risk as they are now more ways to find this information using interconnected cameras and voice recognition software.

Some companies have even decided to switch over to biological authentication which is usually a retina scan or thumbprint scan. This is costly and often times averse to the employees. Unfortunately, the risks associated with online communication and progress are ones not easily dealt with.

Cybersecurity teams do the best they can to create anti-malware so that people who download bad links from their emails don’t end up losing everything. They also create firewall software that prevents your online connection from becoming compromised disallowing intrusion.

Regardless we can not let the risks impede our progress or our future and we must do everything we can to make sure we keep our information secure and our own. That means being careful and cautious while simultaneously keeping our heads high and our vision glued towards a better world.

First seen here.

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Cyber security threat to persist in 2018

Cybersecurity will continue to be a ’hot topic’ this year, demanding the attention of technology experts.

According to statistics of the Information Security Department under the Ministry of Information and Communications, 95 percent of issues related to information security are caused by human negligence.

Recently, passwords of more than 1.4 billion e-mail accounts in the world have been disclosed. The Viet Nam Computer Emergency Response Team (VNCERT) analyzed and found some 438,000 accounts in Viet Nam, of which some 930 had the government domain name, “gov.vn”.

At a year-end meeting on information security-related issues last year, deputy minister of information and communications Nguyen Thanh Hung said the situation of information security would continue to be complicated in 2018.

Notably, hackers would use smarter technologies, including artificial intelligence. In addition to this, cyber attacks would become increasingly dangerous and more difficult to detect as hackers were likely to use advanced threats to paralyze national infrastructure, Hung said.

He also pointed out one of the main reasons for information insecurity was low levels of awareness.

The complexity of information technology depends on the variety of devices being used, with many users in organizations and businesses using personal devices, according to Hung.

If they do not have security solutions, the risk to their information will be implicit right in the mobile device itself.

Currently, with the development of technology and high speed of transmission lines, the number of internet users in the country has increased rapidly.

But users’ perception of information security is low. A majority of Vietnamese people do not have the habit of using software copyrights.

VNCERT director Nguyen Trong Duong said malicious software, malicious code, and viruses that infiltrated computers were invisible to users.

He emphasized on raising awareness of users to detect infected devices while equipping them with cyber-security knowledge, information technology skills and routines of scanning and upgrading software.

Last year, damages caused by computer viruses in Viet Nam were worth VND12.3 trillion (US$547 million), increasing from VND10.4 trillion in 2016.

Ngo Tuan Anh, vice president of BKAV technology group, said attacks on the Internet of Things equipment or malicious codes of blackmailing or digging out virtual money were increasing both in number and sophistication.

Statistics also show that 55 percent of users use the same passwords for many accounts, which risk password exposure.

Technology experts predict that all security network threats this year will stem from attacks on Internet-connected devices.

Thus, besides raising awareness of users, enterprises and organizations need to apply security policies and technology.

Organisations and enterprises, as well as individual computer users using the internet, should restrict the disclosure of personal information via mobile phones, emails and internet services.

Organisations and businesses especially need to protect critical information and implement backup and recovery plans to secure website and email assets. — VNS

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The Ultimate 2018 SEO Ranking Checklist

Keep your page off the bottom of everyone’s search results by checking out our 2018 SEO ranking checklist.

In the digital world, search engine optimization has been an absolute necessity. Things are changing. SEO experts like Neil Patel are evening talking about the “Death of SEO”.

Like everything else digital, common practices change so fast that it’s easy to get left behind. SEO isn’t dead yet, but it is time to update our ‘best practices’ list for SEO rankings in the year 2018.

So sit back, take some notes, and get ready to stay on top of those Google searches.

Let’s get started:

1. Respect the Google-bot

When you’re trying to improve a page’s ranking, it’s important to remember how Google finds your page for its output. Google uses web-crawlers to find your page and if your content isn’t easy for the bot to navigate, you’ve already lost the game.

Learn how to make things easy for the humble Google-bot and the world of SEO will remain open to you. You can achieve this by seeking out and hiring someone versed in technical SEO. The hope is that this person will create clean sitemaps for your site which will make them easy to index by Google crawlers.

2. Do your Keyword Research

If you don’t do your keyword research, you’ll never increase your page’s ranking. A great resource for this is KWFinder. It shows you search volumes, ease of ranking, and the top sites already ranking for that keyword. In addition, you’ll also see closely related keywords and synonyms.

Start with guessing a given user’s intent and come up with a primary keyword. From there, try to come up with as many related keywords as you can, and center your research around those. If you’ve properly guessed the intent, then your keyword research can help take your page to the top.

Don’t underestimate long-tail keywords. These can be a section or the entirety of your content title, but typically are a longer phrase that you can imagine people searching. For example, “Know the Difference Between AI, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning“.

This is both the title and the long-tail keyword of one of our more successful articles. We already had content targeting the keywords “AI”, “Machine Learning”, and “Deep Learning”. For that reason, we didn’t want to use those in this article. At the same time, we could easily imagine people searching for “the difference between AI,” and so this long-tail choice seemed ideal. As it turned out, people do search for this term quite often.

3. Find out What Google Thinks is Relevant

This tip will require some research on Google’s SERP, or search engine results page. This goes hand-in-hand with your keyword research and will help you fine-tune the kind of intent you should be basing your SEO efforts on.

Try doing some searches for your intent. You might find a ton of competition, which is useful to research what kinds of pages are currently ranking. If you’re lucky, you might even find nothing. That can be a double-edged sword because it means that your intent is either dead wrong or will be fantastically easy to rank for.

4. Put Your Best Person on the Front Lines

If you have content on your site, then you should be proud of it. If you have multiple content contributors, though, then you need to pick a star. If you have someone who consistently makes credible, authoritative content, then you need to find a way to amplify their content.

Google picks up on things like credibility. If a link fails to give authoritative results, users will click on other links in the list. After a while, Google will realize that their top search term isn’t satisfying the user, and it’ll rank other pages higher.

5. Don’t be Afraid to ‘get Meta’

If you don’t already know how to set a good meta description, then you need to do some research on the subject. That little snippet of information determines how Google ranks your page so optimizing it is an absolute must.

If you make your meta description pop by utilizing hot keywords your page has a much better chance of ranking highly.

The meta description should at once summarize and be a hook for your content. Many times, if the meta description doesn’t interest the reader, they won’t click on your search result. Ensure it has the most useful and easily digestible information available.

6. Related Keywords Make for a Happy Homepage

If your keyword research stopped at the ‘best’ one you found, you’re doing it wrong. Using semantically related keywords increases the chance that Google is going to see your page as relevant. Remember, Google’s web-crawlers are much better at noticing text than they are at analyzing images and videos.

So say it with me now: One good keyword is not enough. Ever.

7. Enhance Your Visibility

This one is mostly for those in media or any other field that consistently uses compelling images and headlines.

Be aware of the ‘snippet’ that is displayed when your page shows up on a SERP. A better snippet gives you greater visibility when your page comes up in a search. Plus, Google tends to like it when the credit for the featured visual lines up with the snippet.

8. Loading Times are Crucial

Fast loading times and a secure page is great for more than just your users. If your site doesn’t sport an HTTPS at the beginning, Google is less likely to care about you.

The reason behind this is mainly because Google cares about its users. HTTPS has been a focus for Google over the last couple of years, so err on the side of caution and work on your page optimization. If possible, they’ll point people toward the safer site, and that should mean you.

Plus, remember when I mentioned how users bouncing off your page is bad for your ranking? Well, expect users to be in a hurry and optimize your loading speed accordingly. Faster load times on a secure site will seem far more legitimate, which should help reduce your bounce rate. With luck, it’ll also keep your ranking stable.

9. Who is Going to Amplify This?

The people (or pages) you associate with can make or break you, professionally. And Google knows it.

When you have solid links and mentions from authoritative sources around the web, that gets noticed by Google’s crawlers. If you’re getting callbacks from major outlets, you are almost guaranteed a top spot in the SERP.

Domains with links back to your site are called referring domains, and they are extremely important to your overall domain authority. Ahrefs is a great analytics tool for keeping an eye on these factors.

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Are organizations prepared for the ransomware threat?

When ransomware like WannaCry and Petya wreaked havoc on global organizations last year, many were left seemingly defenseless against this relentless, but not entirely new, threat.

After all, ransomware has been doing the rounds for several years and its potential for disruption and harm had been widely discussed within the security world and beyond. Despite this, many organizations were still not able to effectively defend against the attacks.

In order to understand the scope of the threat, the defensive gap against ransomware, and its root causes, Sophos commissioned a survey to find out the state of endpoint security and ransomware defense readiness from respondents spanning industries across five continents.

The survey focused mainly on mid-sized organizations, with half of the respondents in organizations 1000-5000 employees in size, and the other half 100-1000 employees in size. Regardless of organization size, however, the survey was remarkably consistent in its findings.

• Over half of organizations (54%) were hit by ransomware in the past year, with two attacks per organization on average.
• A further 31% of respondents say they expect to be hit by a ransomware attack in the near future.
• The median impact of a ransomware attack is $133k per organization affected – which includes not only the ransom paid but also the cost of resource to resolve the issue.
• 77% of organizations that report being hit by ransomware say they were running up-to-date endpoint security when attacked.
• Over half (54%) of organizations say they do not have any dedicated ransomware protection in place.

Much of the common thinking with IT security is once an organization encounters a specific threat, they learn from it, shore up their defenses and are better prepared for it next time. But the survey results show that ransomware throws this paradigm in the bin: Survey respondents say they were hit by ransomware again and again, and expect that they’ll fall victim to it again in the future.

Certain industries were especially pessimistic about their chances of evading a future, repeated ransomware attack: Healthcare, energy/utilities, professional services and retail respondents were amongst those who were hardest hit by ransomware in the past, with 76% of healthcare respondents saying they’ve been the victim of an attack.

After a ransomware attack takes place, it can be easy to point fingers at the breached organization: What kind of defenses did they have in place? Were their systems updated and patched correctly?

But yet again, when talking about ransomware, the old paradigms shift, as more than three-quarters of survey respondents say they were running up-to-date endpoint technology when ransomware hit. This reveals one of the key findings of this study: traditional endpoint protection alone cannot and does not stop the latest in ransomware attacks.

Last year’s headline-grabbing ransomware attacks made investigating anti-ransomware technologies a greater priority for many organizations, but it still hasn’t necessarily motivated these organizations to implement these technologies. 45% of survey respondents said they realize that anti-ransomware technology is important and that they plan to implement it in the future, but haven’t done so yet. (Another 7% said they realize the value of this kind of protection but have no plans to implement it.)

As not all anti-ransomware technologies are equally effective against the ever-evolving threat of ransomware, organizations may find themselves invested in technologies that offer little protection when the attacks occur.

The report dives deeper into this, asking survey respondents to identify the statement – out of a choice of four – that correctly defines what anti-ransomware and anti-exploit technologies do. Less than one-third of respondents (31%) were able to select the correct answer. With this lack of understanding, a significant number of organizations may believe they are adequately protected against the ransomware threat, but in fact are not.

If this all seems overwhelming, take heart in the fact that you’re not alone: 87% of respondents said the malware threat had grown more complex in the last year. To effectively stop ransomware in its tracks, traditional endpoint security isn’t enough. Organizations need the strongest defense against these persistent threats and should investigate anti-exploit and anti-ransomware technologies in order to be fully prepared for future attacks.

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Maersk Reinstalled 45,000 PCs and 4,000 Servers to Recover From NotPetya Attack

• Maersk CEO: “We had to reinstall an entire infrastructure”.

• Maersk covered 80% of all shipping volume without any IT.

• Maersk: We were collateral damage of probably a state attack

• Maersk: NotPetya damage between $250 and $300 million

• Maersk CEO now sees the good side of the incident

The world’s largest container shipping company —A.P. Møller-Maersk— said it recovered from the NotPetya ransomware incident by reinstalling over 4,000 servers, 45,000 PCs, and 2500 applications over the course of ten days in late June and early July 2017.

By all accounts, this is a monumental effort from Maersk’s IT staff, equivalent to installing a new infrastructure from the ground up.

The effort is even more jaw-dropping when we take into consideration that Maersk is the world’s largest shipping companies, hauling over a fifth of the world’s ship containers.

These new details came to light yesterday, while Jim Hagemann Snabe, Chairman of A.P. Møller-Maersk, participated in a panel on securing the future of cyberspace at the World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland.

The incident Snabe was referencing is the NotPetya ransomware outbreak that hit companies around the world.

“I’ll never forget, It was the 27 of June when I was woken up at 4 o’clock in the morning. A call came from the office that we had suffered a cyber attack,” Snabe said.

“The impact of that is that we basically found that we had to reinstall an entire infrastructure,” Snabe continued. “We had to install 4,000 new servers, 45,000 new PCs, 2,500 applications.”

“And that was done in a heroic effort over ten days. Normally —I come from the IT industry— I would say it’s gonna take six months. It took ten days,” Snabe added, referring to his previous position as SAP’s CEO.

The consequences were felt almost immediately in Maersk’s operations, but Snabe says his company’s employees faced the storm bravely, with minimal impact on the firm’s activity.

“Imagine a company where a ship with 20,000 containers would enter a port every 15 minutes, and for ten days you have no IT.

“It’s almost impossible to even imagine. And we actually overcome that problem with human resilience,” Stabe said. “We only had a 20% drop in volume, so we managed 80% of that volume manually. […] Customers were great contributors to overcoming that.”

In hindsight, Snabe says he feels that his company was just “collateral damage of probably a state attack.”

The NotPetya ransomware initially spread as a malicious update of M.E.Doc, a popular Ukrainian accounting software. Many non-Ukrainian companies were also infected because NotPetya spread to internal networks via VPN. The ransomware infected a company’s offices in different countries after it initially infected Ukrainian headquarters.

Snabe’s remarks regarding NotPetya being a state attack come after many cyber-security companies attributed to NotPetya ransomware to a cyber-espionage group named TeleBots that many suspects is the cyber-arm of a Russian intelligence agency.

Ukrainian officials didn’t mince words or time blaming NotPetya on Russia, and recently, even the CIA officially blamed the Russian military’s GRU GTsST, or Main Center for Special Technology, as the source of the NotPetya ransomware, in a classified report seen by Washington Post reporters.

Snabe also said his company estimated the damages caused by NotPetya to between $250 and $300 million. This is also the damages tag that both US pharmaceutics giant Merck and US-based international courier service FedEx also put on the NotPetya aftermath.

Maersk was lucky to fully recover in ten days after the incident. A month after NotPetya hit some of its factories, Merck was still not producing some types of bulk products used for products such as KEYTRUDA, JANUVIA, and ZEPATIER, critical drugs for various illnesses.

FedEx was also unlucky, revealing that some of the NotPetya damage was permanent, and admitting that its TNT subsidiary might have lost some customer package details for good.

“It was an important wake-up call,” he said. “We were basically average when it comes to cyber-security, like many companies. And this was a wake-up call to become not just good —we actually have a plan to come in a situation where our ability to manage cyber-security becomes a competitive advantage.”

In the subsequent discussions, Snabe also urged fellow Davos World Economic Forum participants to focus on securing cyberspace.

A video of Snabe’s comments regarding Maersk’s NotPetya recovery efforts and more is embedded below. The discussion is right at the beginning, following the 02:20 mark.

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How to 2x Your Traffic This Year with Video SEO

Video is the massive untapped opportunity in 2018.

We’ve seen how video traffic has grown in recent years and according to industry studies, it is expected to flourish even more.

Cisco predicts that by 2021 about 80 percent of global Internet consumption will be video content, and from 2016 to 2021, global Internet video traffic will increase threefold.

Now is the right time to incorporate video into your brand’s SEO and content strategy.

Optimize your content for the world’s second largest search engine – YouTube.

There is so much potential for video SEO this year.

Video Optimization: Why You Should Care

All these years you’ve worked hard on your website, creating a wealth of awesome content in order to rank in Google.

However, competition is fierce in the world’s largest search engine.

Ranking on Page 1 – let alone in Position 1 – of Google’s SERPs is extremely difficult.

Not all your articles will rank well on Google.

By keeping them as is, you’re essentially letting them go to waste.

To maximize the articles you already have, you just need to turn your content into videos and publish them on YouTube.

The popular video-sharing platform has an active worldwide user base of more than 1 billion, an immense market that’s worth investing into.

If you do video optimization right, you’re going to get great results from YouTube. You don’t need to have killer rankings as most of the traffic is from browsing and recommended videos.

Your 3 Video Optimization Goals

• Ranking in Google with videos.
• Ranking on YouTube via YouTube search.
• Getting suggested on YouTube.

How Video SEO on YouTube Works

Approaching video SEO on YouTube is a bit different than regular SEO on Google and other search engines. YouTube knows all the metrics and indicators of good content.

The goal is to keep people on the site, and if you do that, YouTube will promote you for free if you get your optimization right.

Video SEO: Things You Need to Do

1. Find Video Topics

Here are the top three ways to come up with a shortlist of video topics:

• Take existing content you already have and turn it into videos. This is the easiest win because you already have the content. Get a list of your top performing blog posts in terms of interaction and repurpose them into the video.
• Analyze your competitors. The idea here is to look for competing channels, find what topics they are covering, and model that.
• Take your ideas and run them through YouTube autocomplete. YouTube will provide the most relevant topic ideas

 2. Get More out of Every Video You Create

YouTube looks at a lot of factors in determining a quality video. However, the most important ones are:

• Watch time.
• Engagement.

YouTube’s goal is to keep people on the site – so the longer you keep people on, engaged, and watching videos, the better.

Tips for Getting People to Watch

• Make sure to create a good title, description, and thumbnail to encourage viewers to click and watch your video.
• Focus on high CTR headlines – intriguing headlines that match with highly searched topics – and use bold colors on your video thumbnail.
• The first 15 seconds of your video has to be awesome to keep the viewer engaged. Make sure to hook your viewers in. Provide a preview or a teaser of what the video is about.

How to Keep Users Engaged?

At the end of the video, ask them to comment, like, and subscribe.
Use cards to promote CTAs as well as other videos and playlists.
Add an end screen to promote more videos or playlists on your channel.

3. Easy Video Optimization for More Traffic

Studies show that there isn’t as much correlation between keywords and actual rankings within YouTube. However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t optimize for keywords.

Even though it may mean less for rankings, it still matters for understanding what the video is about and relevancy. Keywords should be on your video’s upload filename, title, and description.

Most channel traffic will come from YouTube’s Suggested Videos on the right sidebar, and this is where you want your videos to show up. In order to get there, make sure to maximize your video tags.

How to Optimize with Tags

• Use browser plugins such as Tube Buddy or vidIQ.
• Search your main keywords, find the videos ranking, and take note of the tags they are using.
• When you’re setting up your YouTube video, vidIQ will suggest relevant tags from other popular videos.

4. Multiply Your Reach with Video Promotion

You need to promote your YouTube video right after publishing it. This can help increase view velocity, which will help your video to show up more in the search.

YouTube Video Promotions Tips

• Email it to your list.
• Push to social media.
• Embed on your blog.
• Paid traffic.

Video Production Challenges & Solutions

Producing Videos Isn’t as Easy as It Sounds

It can be really expensive to produce videos in-house. Industry standards can even reach up to $1,000 per video minute.

An HD camera can also cost thousands – let alone lights, studio, actors, editing, editing software.

On top of that, there’s the simple fact that most people don’t want to be on camera.

Key Takeaways

• Optimizing for YouTube is fairly simple compared to the long process it takes when optimizing for Google. YouTube will even promote your video content for free if you optimize it right.
• About 25 percent of Google searches have at least one video in them, so you can also rank in the SERPs with your optimized YouTube video.
• When looking for video topics, you can take easy wins. Just turn your best content into videos.
• During the video creation process, remember that it’s important to keep watch time and engagement up.
• Make sure to use tags if you want to get into Suggested Videos, where most of the traffic is
• Multiply your video’s reach by promoting on your blog, email, social, and paid search.

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3 Biggest Cybersecurity Threats Facing Small Businesses Right Now

Nearly two-thirds of businesses suffered a cybercrime in the past year. There is no reason to think there will be fewer this year.

Technology has quickly engulfed the world around us. Everything we do, both at a business and personal level, seems to involve technology in one way or another. However, as that happens, small businesses continue to be a top target for hackers, with the number of organizations hit by cybercrime rising each year. According to The Ponemon Institute’s 2017 State of Cybersecurity in Small & Medium-Sized Businesses report, 61 percent of businesses experienced a cyber attack in 2017, signifying a 6 percent increase from the previous year’s 55 percent. Data breaches were up to 54 percent from 50 percent in 2016.

This year promises faster internet, more connectivity, and unfortunately, more cybersecurity threats. Threat Horizon 2018, from the Threat Horizon series by the non-profit association Information Security Forum (ISF), shows that with the growing connectivity, there will be an increase in the information security threat landscape.

1. Internet of Things (IoT) leaks.

As real-time data collection becomes increasingly important, the IoT is growing too. From monitoring traffic and collecting real-time patient information to optimizing the uptime of industrial equipment, organizations are massively acquiring IoT devices. However, these devices aren’t always secure. This creates a potential backdoor into the organization, warns the ISF.

IoT works so great because it’s comprised of dozens of devices that hide in plain sight. Be it alarm systems, GPS, web cameras, HVAC or medical devices, such as pacemakers, it’d be hard to guess which of these devices are even connected to the internet in the first place. But since IoT devices lack built-in security, they are often easy targets by hackers.

Attackers usually use automated programs to locate IoT devices. Once located, attackers attempt to connect to the device using the default admin credentials. And since most users don’t change them, this is usually a success for the attacker. Once in, the hackers can easily install malware, basically taking the system under their control.

Daniel Soderberg, CEO of EyeOnPass, advises changing all passwords immediately when you acquire a new device. “I wouldn’t operate any device with the default password,” he warns. “Default passwords are usually printed and freely available, exposing the user to all manner of cyber dangers.”

2. Opaque algorithms.

The Threat Horizon 2018 report also warns of the increasing using of algorithms. As organizations continue to fully trust algorithms with the operation and decisions concerning critical systems, the report says, they lose the visibility into the functioning and interaction of their systems.

The lack of proper and transparent interactions between algorithms poses a security risk in case unintended interactions between algorithms create incidents — like the U.S. Treasury Bonds “flash crash” of October 2014 that saw bond yields drastically drop briefly before the algorithms corrected themselves.

“We know they’re going to do some quirky stuff from time-to-time,” says Steve Durbin, managing director of the ISF. “You need to understand some of the exposure you have to algorithmic systems. We’re building more and more of our systems on top of algorithms — industrial control, critical infrastructure. There’s an increased risk in this space we need to be addressing.”

To be able to manage these risks, organizations need to have a human monitoring the execution of operations and decisions often left to algorithms. The report advises organizations to know the risks that come with algorithm-controlled systems and know when to involve a human. Also, they must update their code maintenance policies and identify alternatives to treating algorithm-related incidents, especially when insurance isn’t an option.

3. Security researchers are being silenced.

Security researchers are often the whistleblowers. They impart knowledge about digital vulnerabilities, making sure systems are secure and users’ data remains in the intended hands. When they are silenced, either by the government or private companies, it’s often a loss for all users.

With software replacing hardware in most major sectors, users and businesses depend on researchers to unearth vulnerabilities and make them public as part of ongoing efforts to improve security. However, lately, manufacturers have been responding to such actions by taking legal action instead of working with the research to fix those vulnerabilities. The ISF predicts that this trend will only grow; exposing customers to vulnerabilities that manufacturers have decided to hide rather than fix.

To protect themselves, the ISF advises technology buyers, which include small businesses, to insist on transparency during the procurement process. It advises manufacturers to take it more positively when vulnerabilities are found within their systems by rewarding the researchers rather than attempting to punish them.

Considering that a researcher might find a vulnerability in a tool in 2018 and not report it, it’s imperative for the small business owner to take a step further in protecting themselves, even if it means working with other business in order to come up with an affordable solution.

Transparency is key.

When it comes to security, transparency has a great role to play. But this part has long been left for the security professionals. If all users reflected some degree of transparency, security in the cyberspace would be easier to achieve. If the non-technical managers and leaders understood the impact of good and poor protection, they would use the cyber assets they have more responsibly. Employees would be more careful about the devices they introduce to the network.

As the business owner, it’s your job to carefully manage the inventory of the connected IoT devices. “Some things have internet capabilities that you didn’t ask for and will never use,” says Leon Adato of SolarWinds adding that any devices that don’t need to be connected to the internet should be disconnected.

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