This Week's Gurus

Chris Boaz, Head of Marketing at PCA Predict (a GBG Company) Retailers around the UK know that summer is the ideal time to begin the build-up to the Christmas season. When should they start though? Considering that 26% of UK consumers begin hunting for the perfect Christmas gifts come August, July would seem like the ideal time to prepare. Whatever your goal as a retailer is, from increasing revenue, retaining shoppers or reaching new consumers,...

The upcoming EU GDPR is not only relevant to CISOs and DPOs (Data Protection Officers), but has a massive impact on businesses, particularly due to the new consent rules. Instead of a fuzzy consent, given once, in the form of “This site uses cookies. If you continue using the site, you accept that we collect all data we can and do whatever we want to with the information.”, EU GDPR mandates consent per purpose, which...

Currently, around 23 billion ‘things’ are connected to the world’s numerous communication networks and more are joining at a rapid speed. For consumers, these include everything from connected fridges to watches. The general hunger for both novelty and innovation is swiftly increasing as industry goliaths continue to release new products into the market.   Though machine-type communications are set to usher in the fourth industrial revolution, it is predicted at least 65 per cent of...

It’s well understood that securing your AWS cloud applications is important and that it needs to be front and centre. This is especially true for companies that primarily generate business through their applications and websites, such as online retailers and SaaS providers. According to Verizon’s 2017 Data Breach Investigations Report, web application attacks are the leading cause of breaches, more than tripling from 9% to 30% since 2014. And as alarming as that sounds, it makes sense...

This week, the Guru had a quick chat with SecuritySmart Founder and Editor, Robert Schifreen. What is your background and history within IT and cybersecurity? I've been in the industry a long time, on both sides of the fence.   In the 1980s I was a hacker and was one of the defendants in the world's first hacking-related jury trial.  Myself and the late Steve Gold got into BT's Prestel network, primarily because of basic mistakes that...

What has happened? A new outbreak of ransomware, a form of malware which encrypts your files and demands a ransom payment to recover them, has hit organisations globally. It appears to be a derivative of the previously seen Petya ransomware, but with some differences. Many researchers have cast doubt on whether this really is a variant of Petya or something just designed to look like Petya, hence it has been dubbed NotPetya. The outbreak began...

While today’s printer manufacturers might make a little money on their hardware, it’s the ink that brings in the big profits. The same concept applies to razors and razorblades. It turns out it’s also true for something as ubiquitous and seemingly well understood as the virtual private network (VPN). Today, practically every company has a VPN, and most enterprises have many. Just like the printers and the razors, many companies may think of the VPN...

Community based threat detection and prevention has been a fundamental principle in Anti-Virus and Intrusion Detection Systems for years.  Pooling the information and experience of multiple organisations to rapidly identify emerging threats, this collaborative approach enables security companies to quickly create a patch and disseminate it globally to minimise a hacker’s opportunity with that specific attack vector. This model is now being extended to voice security in a bid to combat the escalating threats, including...

Cybercriminals have been known to target businesses across all sectors. Recent high-profile cyber attacks have successfully breached well-known brands including telecoms providers, retailers and banks. Evidently, all industries are potentially vulnerable. As businesses become ever more negatively affected by cyber attacks, lessons need to be learnt and effective cyber defences implemented in order to protect businesses and their customers. The problem is, this is easy to say, but much harder to do. Businesses of all...

WannaCry brought the threat posed by cybercriminals into the public consciousness in a way that had not really been seen before. Temporarily crippling the NHS brought the dangers of cyber-attacks to reality and demonstrated that organisations need to be taking the problem of all forms of cybercrime seriously. Ransomware is a particularly devastating form of attack that a successful attack can have a major commercial impact on businesses. Carbon Black recently surveyed 5,000 people to...