This week the nation watched as the president of the United States of America attempted to touch on the nation’s ever increasing cyber security threat. While it was encouraging to see an issue that has long been kept somewhat out of site from the American public finally hit the mainstream stage, most of us in the industry agree that it hardly scratched the surface in terms of the major security threats the country is facing. Our news round up this week saw many trying to map out just what exactly is the state of today’s security industry.
Image: Carolyn Kaster, File/Associated Press
Why Smart Devices and Wearables will be Securities New Headache
Smart devices are increasingly the new weak link in the cyber kill chain, at least at the reconnaissance level, if not further into the enterprise. In his piece this week David Geer took a look at how CSOs examine the vulnerabilities, threats, and proactive enterprise security measures. Focusing on preempting smart locking and HIPPA compliance when looking at the data collected by personal health and wearables, Geer makes a strong case the growing number of security issues that are bubbling just below the surface as users continue to connect and utilize their personal data across devices.
Fighting Back—How Businesses Can Take Security into Their Own Hands
“According to a BT study, mobile security breaches have affected more than two-thirds (68 percent) of global organizations in the last 12 months.” Despite years of headline stories about security leaks and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and repeated admonishments from security professionals that businesses (and individuals) needed to do a better job protecting sensitive data, many businesses are still unprepared or not properly protected from a variety of security threats. For Jennifer Lonoff Schiff it boils down to six main risks that businesses are up against and that if they address properly can beat. The list of risks that can mitigated include disgruntled employees, mobile devices and cloud applications.
Beyond The State of the Union—Obama’s Real Security Proposals
While the president may not have outlined his exact plan of attack against cyber security threats during his speech this week he did get a few proposals underway to try and address existing threats. Lorenzo Franceschi took a closer look at the president’s proposals and specifically how experts in the field feel about his ideas around how companies disclose security breaches and hunt down cyber criminals. Enterprises will likely struggle with balancing the need to provide better security to keep pace with cyber criminals while at the same time respecting a user’s right to privacy. While there is a history of collaboration in the security market to share data in an effort to improve threat detection, future legislation must take caution to keep user privacy paramount. We will have to follow closely to see exactly what types of personally identifiable information can be collected by companies or the government. This is just the beginning!
What did you think of the buzz about the state of Cyber Security this week? What stories were you following? We’d love to hear from you.
