This Week's Gurus

Email is a major weapon for cybercriminals and anyone wishing to penetrate an organisations cyber defences. Even nations are at risk. Recently a prankster using the moniker “Sinon Reborn” managed to get the UK Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, to respond to an email she believed to be from a new colleague. From a cybersecurity point of view this is deeply worrying. The same prankster has also tricked other government officials – in both the UK...

Our world today is ruled by technology and we can’t do without it at all. From booking our flight tickets, to catching up with an old friend, technology plays an important role in it. However, the same technology may betray you when it’s vulnerable and could lead to loss of essential data. Cyber security, alongside physical commercial security has thus, slowly and steadily, become one of the most important topics in the business industry to...

Whether it’s well-publicised cyberattacks on government organisations or widespread ransomware that threatens to halt business operations, attackers continue to target privileged credentials as a quick and easy means to reach critical assets and steal sensitive data. Based on what we’ve learned from working with organisations that have suffered a major breach, once attackers break into the network – often through targeted phishing and weak passwords – they must find a way to move through the network and...

In today’s business environment, cyber attacks have become unavoidable. Recent research suggests that the number targeting UK businesses has increased by more than half in the past three months, to a staggering approximate 65,000 internet-born assaults per company. Cyber security therefore needs to be placed high on an organisation’s risk register, as the ramifications of suffering an attack can be stark. This will only get worse from next year onwards, when the new General Data...

When we see a car wreck it’s very easy to slow down and gawk. The first thing we think is “Wow, that’s awful,” quickly followed by “Whew… glad that wasn’t me,” and then we drive on. Most of us don’t spend time thinking about how the wreck happened — we were just glad it wasn’t us. A similar sentiment works in cyber security. But instead of focusing on the wreck, the rest of us responsible...

Next May the GDPR comes into force.  No wait, that sounds wrong.  Surely it's the GDPR regulations.  But if I call it that, I'll get hate-mail from the people who complain when I write about PIN numbers.  So we'll stick with the GDPR for now. The entire security industry seems to have been shaken up by the impending GDPR.   C-level people are frantically trying to work out the implications and obligations for their companies.  Half...

Passwords are continuously being stolen and sold on the Internet for profit. This is leading to larger and more dangerous attacks, with a range of high-profile companies suffering from data breaches. Experts have estimated that over 300 billion username and password combinations will be at risk of being hacked, stolen and sold on the dark web by 2020. LinkedIn, for example, have reported that over 117 million email and password combinations were stolen and sold...

The market for managed services in IT is growing fast. According to analyst, Markets and Markets, the global market for managed services will have grown from $107.17 billion in 2014 to $193.34 billion by 2019, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.5%. Research by Kaseya confirms this trend. Of the 900 managed service providers (MSPs) from 50-plus countries who took part, more than a quarter (26%) reported that their average annual Monthly Recurring Revenue has shot up by more...

Propelled by recent advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning, businesses are embracing chatbots as an efficient way to engage customers, as well as save time and money by automating certain functions. In a business world in which customer service, especially timely and relevant communication, is the most important factor to success, chatbots can be instrumental in getting ahead of the game. Essentially an extension of other Human Interface Mediums (your phone, the internet), chatbots...

In 2017 nearly all organisations are storing or processing their customers’ private information electronically to an extent. Organisations that store customers’ private information have a duty of care to protect that data. Credit card numbers and other personal details fetch a high price on the black market and, unfortunately, organisations do a very poor job of keeping them out of the hands of cybercriminals. Regulators in many countries are now levying considerable penalties against organisations...