When it comes to dealing with hacks such as the one Sony suffered, Gareth Niblett, Chairman of the BCS Information Security Specialist Group says we should all learn from others mistakes.

1. We are all susceptible to being hacked
and our private records compromised.
The trick to defending yourself or
your organisation is to learn from the
experiences of others and understand
who might wish to target you.
Avoiding the mistakes of others is
a low-cost method of improving your
security posture.
One of the big attacks of 2014 was
against Sony, which was comprehensively
taken over by hackers.
Other than the debate as to who
perpetrated the hack, it was apparent
that Sony has not learned from previous
compromises, that it and others had
suffered, as it continued to operate with
lax security controls.
Observers might wonder how a large
organisation, more than able to afford
capable professionals, administering
appropriate security policies and
procedures, and underpinned by
technology could allow many terabytes of
data to be exfiltrated without anyone or
anything noticing something was awry.
The practice of keeping a directory of
static passwords for corporate accounts
shows how even a large business
struggles to find a way to balance security
with usability.
Attacks leveraging zero-day
vulnerabilities can crack open even the
strongest layers of defence, so you still
need to also be checking on the inside.
INFORMATION SECURITY
All of us rely on software and many of
us rely on it being robust and secure. It
is impossible for functional software to
have no bugs or vulnerabilities, but many
can be squashed during the software
development lifecycle, with code analysis /
testing. Secure software development can
make our digital environment safer.
When it comes to dealing with hacks such as the one Sony suffered,
Gareth Niblett,Chairman of the BCS Information Security Specialist Group
says we should all learn from others mistakes.
Information Security Specialist
Group (ISSG):
www.bcs-issg.org.uk
Information Risk Management and
Assurance Specialist Group:
www.bcs.org/groups/irma
BCS Security Community of
Expertise (SCoE):
www.bcs.org/securitycommunity
FURTHER INFORMATION
doi:10.1093/itnow/bwv008©2015TheBritishComputerSocietyImage:iStock/476346099
22 ITNOW March 2015
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