9 ways to stay safe from cyberattacks
“April is the cruelest month,” T.S. Eliot wrote, but if he were alive today and working in cybersecurity he might have chosen May. This month saw a ransomware cyberattack that was startling in its scale, affecting hundreds of thousands of computers around the world in networks ranging from railways to hospitals, causing treatment delays for patients in the UK. While the WannaCry attack was entirely preventable, it can offer several lessons about prevention and resilience that bear repeating. The price of complacency This latest strain of ransomware takes advantage of a vulnerability in Windows that, according to Microsoft, uses software …
What Y2K And 9/11 Could Have Taught Us About Managing The WannaCry Cyber Attack
Over the past week, countless organizations around the world were victims of a cyberattack involving WannaCry ransomware. While the EU’s law enforcement agency called the attack “unprecedented,” it was perhaps only unique in scale. In fact, this attack was neither sophisticated nor innovative. It had many precedents and was definitely preventable. For starters, according to numerous security analysts, WannaCry took advantage of a file-sharing vulnerability in Windows that was repurposed using commonly available “Ransomware-as-a-Service” to package the attack and allow it to support multiple languages simultaneously. To make matters worse, Microsoft had actually released a patch for these vulnerabilities in …
These Are 10 Cybersecurity Myths That Must Be Busted
Cybersecurity was huge in 2016. From ransomware to weaponized Internet of Things (IoT) devices to foreign hacking of elections – last year saw it all. But many of these threats aren’t new and will never really go away. Over the last 25 years, one of the most valuable things I’ve learned in attending conferences and talking to cybersecurity experts around the world is that one of the greatest weapons we have to prevent cyber attacks is our own mindset. This column has previously touched on the importance of online hygiene and why you should think of your online activities like …
Why cybersecurity is now top of the agenda for the world’s decision-makers
Last year saw a huge increase in cyber-related incidents, including big data breaches, physical infrastructure tampering, Internet of Things (IoT) devices turning on their owners, ransomware, and even allegations of election hacking that captured the public’s attention. Sometimes it seems there’s no way that enterprises and governments can effectively stop the rising tide of cyberattacks. The good news is, along with the launch of a global cybersecurity watchdog, stakeholders are now discussing these issues in major international forums that until recently were neither digitally focused nor multistakeholder in nature. The inaugural meeting of the Global Commission on the Stability of …
How Charles Lindbergh Can Save Japan (Part 2)
Read Part 1 Why Do We Need a J PRIZE? Aside from the obvious shortcomings of research funding in Japan, why can’t we just rely on domestic organizations to come up with intelligent, workable solutions to these problems? After all, Japan has produced several Nobel laureates in both physics and chemistry in just the past decade. Surely domestic research is up to the task of tackling any problems on the horizon? The short answer is: If the U.S., with more researchers, more labs, bigger budgets, and, frankly, higher-ranked research facilities than Japan, could achieve the goals of the X PRIZE, …