XTRATEK Cloud & Cybersecurity

📣 According to the global cost of data breach report jointly published by the Ponemon Institute and IBM, the average cost of a data breach worldwide is $4.88 million.📣 Every time there is a successful information system compromise with data exposed - lost, altered, encrypted, name it! - it is a whooping sum of money going down the drains, and a staggering loss for businesses and for the economy. It is sadder still that for some, the amount and the consequences are even more egregious because $4.88 million is only the average, in the 17 countries studied, meaning that many organisations are losing even more. 📈 Also, these figures are much worse in the global north countries. It is $9.48 million in the US.❗ 83% of all organisations have had data security breaches on more than one occasion, and that is how pervasive cybercrime is nowadays.❗ Clearly, if your organisation has not been a victim of data or cybersecurity breaches, it is more likely than not that you are simply not aware, something that is even more insidious.⁉ Particularly when you have no effective risk management measures in place in your organisation, it is only a matter of time, and of the size effect of the consequences when data breach, almost ineluctably, occurs.⚡

Security is the number one job of every employee at Microsoft. As part of our Secure Future Initiative, we are transforming our culture and the way we design, build, and test our products to prioritize security above all else. Today, we shared our first progress report, outlining the actions we’ve taken and milestones we’ve reached over the past few months.    We know that as a company we have a unique responsibility to deliver the highest level of security for our platforms and our customers. As part of that, we have focused on making changes across our culture, governance, and six prioritized security pillars. We have created a new Cybersecurity Governance Council and appointed Deputy Chief Information Security Officers across the company aligned to foundational security functions and all engineering divisions. We’ve made significant progress to better protect tenants, identities, networks and engineering systems, dedicated more engineers to security than ever before and have created new process to ensure security is prioritized at every level of the company.   A transformation of this scale can be complex, but we are committed to changing our culture, mindsets, and ways of working to make the world more secure.     https://lnkd.in/g86kS3Uk

🔔 Printer security; smart is not so smart 🔔 If you plugged your printer into your network and are using it with all the default settings, then your business network and information systems are like a house with the doors wide open, beckoning on passers-by to come in.😤 Same with Internet of things (IoT), such as security cameras or smart home devices, and operational technology (OT) devices in the workplace. ☠ These objects are very “smart” in procuring expediency and convenience but daft in cybersecurity terms! 🙈 Most modern printers are remotely accessible from anywhere in the world without passwords.⚠ Unwelcome intruders are able to directly access sensitive information stored in your printer including network passwords, laterally navigate your network and escalate their privileges.⚠ In the vicinity, anyone can access the devices using Wi-Fi-Direct, bypassing typical security safeguards such as router and firewalls, and other intrusion prevention technology, including monitoring logs.⚠ Features such as AirPrint, bonjour, and e-print, et cetera, available in most modern printers, transmit unencrypted data over public networks.⚠ What should I do? ✔ Access your printer via applications that come from the manufacturer or via a web browser on another device connected to the same network as your printer, using its IP Address. The printer manual is useful to consult at this point. ✅ Disable every convenience feature that is not necessary for your business processes such as Wi-Fi direct, AirPrint, e-print and web services. ✅ If you really need these features, then make sure that the optimum security configurations are in place including the most secure wireless protocol supported, preferably WPA3. ✅ The security setting should include strictly limiting access to accounts and devices that need it, and configuring monitoring and logging.✅ Change the admin password from the default 12345678 known to the eight billion people in the world, to something reasonably difficult to guess or brute force. 😜 Enforce network segmentation and place printers and other Internet of things and OT in a separate network isolated from where more sensitive data live, to limit lateral movement and privilege escalation. Ideally that network should be robustly firewalled off other networks.✅ This seemingly stringent action is necessary since IOTs, and printers are notorious for having unpatched vulnerabilities and irregular updates. 📢 Malicious actors routinely remotely scan devices in search of such exploitable vulnerabilities. ⚠ As part of a good cybersecurity hygiene practice, strive to ensure driver and firmware updates are installed on these devices, as soon as they are available.✅ #OT #IoT #Cybersecurity #SupplyChainSecurity #InternetSecurity #InfoSec #DataProtection #NetworkSecurity

📯Business Email Compromise (BEC) with a Deepfake orchestra📯 🔕 Cybercriminals rely heavily on social engineering involving trickery and the manipulation of human emotions. With the professionalisation of cybercrime and the availability of AI, cybercriminals can now more creatively plan and execute formidably convincing and complex social engineering attacks. 🔕 Imagine an ordinarily astute and hardworking Finance Manager of a medium sized company who receives an email at 9am Monday morning requesting funds be wired to a regular supplier, on ‘their alternative account’.🕘 The email is nothing outside the ordinary. A moment later they receive a call from the CEO buttressing the message in the email and stressing how urgent it was to make the payment and explaining away the modified payment method.⚡ The instruction is clear, so they proceed to make the transfer of £1 million pounds, and who wouldn’t, in the circumstances, after speaking to the CEO himself.😣 But it turns out, the email is a spoof, and the call from the CEO was only a deep fake cloned voice call.😜 Enter Business Email Compromise orchestrated by deep fake AI technology, now in the toolkit of hackers! 📯 🔦 Business Email Compromise refers to a cyber threat method where the victim receives an email from the attacker, sent from their own domain having been compromised, or from a look alike domain or email address. They may also intercept message flow within, into, and out of the organisation.🔦 Combined with pretexting, employees are often tricked to send fraudulent payments or even disclose sensitive and prejudicial information when an email purports to come from senior executives, requiring it. 🔖 This was already a very methodical, sophisticated and costly cybercrime, without the additional layer of deepfake complexity. The cumulative loss to end of 2023 from 2013 from BEC, in the US, is a staggering $50 billion. 📈 Controlling BEC requires the implementation of policies, processes and procedures directed at preventing such attacks including ongoing security awareness education for staff, and web and email security controls. ✅ Quite simply put, an effective security awareness training programme for employees reduces the unknown unknowns, that conduce to cyberattacks. 😇 At XTRATEK Cloud & Cybersecurity, we offer ongoing security awareness education tailored to the architecture and needs of your business, with aim to imbue your people and organisation with an inherent culture of digital security and cyber resilience. ✅ We assist organisations to implement a cost effective but nonetheless robust information security management system that puts security at the heart of what they do, effectively identifying, protecting, detecting, responding to, and facilitating recovery from cyber threats or incidents. ✅ Call us on 07448376910 or email info@xtratekinc.com. #BusinessEmailCompromise #Cybersecurity #GRC #ISMS #BEC #AI #DeepFakeAI #DeepFake #CyberAttacks

📞 Do you know, NIS2 is effective, just 40 work days from today? 📞 NIS2 is the new European cybersecurity directive aiming to raise the bar higher for collective cybersecurity in the EU internal market. 💡 Despite BREXIT, it will apply to UK businesses, accessing the common market, and in scope of the legislation. 🔕 Albeit an extra pressure on lean resources, it does desirably mandate businesses to embrace a robust cybersecurity posture management that ultimately enhances digital resilience in the face of a rapidly evolving cyber threats landscape. ⚠ Businesses can then fully leverage advanced technological innovations securely, and remain competitive. As they say, “Without pain, there is no gain”. ❇ The following are the baseline cybersecurity measures required under the NIS2 directive. 🔦 a.     Strategy and governance including information security risk analysis and risk treatment policies and procedures, executive ownership, and obligatory executive cybersecurity awareness training. 🔖 b.    Incident handling policies and procedures including a sound cybersecurity framework that identifies, protects from, detects, responds to, and ensures recovery from network and information security threats or incidents. 🔖 c.     Business continuity, disaster recovery & crisis management planning including back-up solutions. 🔖 d.    Supply chain security and third-party risk management policies and procedures. 🔖 e.     Enforce policies and procedures to ensure security in network and information systems acquisition, development and maintenance, including vulnerability handling and disclosure. 🔖 f.       Implement continuous monitoring of risk management control measures. 🔖 g.     An obligation to enforce basic cybersecurity hygiene practices and provide awareness training for employees. 🔖 h.     Enforce as appropriate, measures to guard against threats to the CIA (confidentiality, integrity, and availability), with the use of cryptography and encryption. 🔖 i.       Implement human resources security solutions including due diligence in hiring-onboarding and off-boarding, digital assets management, and identity and access management controls. 🔖 j.       Enforce the use of multi-factor authentication or continuous authentication solutions, secured voice, video and text communications and secured emergency communication systems. 🔖 The good news is that XTRATEK Cloud & Cybersecurity can assist your organisation with implementing these measures. ✅ Call us on 07448376910 or email info@xtratekinc.com , for a free exploratory session on your specific organisational needs. ✅ The foregoing cybersecurity measures mostly amount to common sense in the current digital climate, in my opinion. What do you think❓ #NIS2 #Cybersecurity #ISMS #BusinessContinuity #CyberAttacks #DataProtection #CyberResilience #InfoSec #DisasterRecoveryPlan #IncidentResponsePlan #CrisisManagementPlan #RegulatoryCompliance #CyberAwareness

🔔 Do you think as many do that signing up for cloud services is tantamount to a backup? 🔔 Are you therefore complacent about your data security, and business continuity in the event of breaches? 📯 If so then here is some information to make you think again. 🔥 It is commonly believed that “our data is backed up in the cloud”, when all we do is subscribe to and make use of cloud native or cloud hosted software applications, where the service level agreement does not encompass backup of data, and there is no guarantee of data recovery in the case of cyber incidents that may lead to loss of critical data. 📣 From the perspective of a cyber incident response and management or disaster recovery and business continuity planning, this is surely a dangerous misconception with potentially egregious consequences. This is more so as we are being confronted with the reality of how things can easily go wrong, in today’s digital ecosystem, spelling the need to build in resiliency. And it is not just hackers, it is human error with accidental deletions or alterations, malicious intent or sabotage, malware, sync errors, corrupted updates, and even natural disasters. 😔 Some data loss or alterations go unnoticed for months, and for most SaaS platforms, data recovery is limited to thirty days, and perhaps stretched furthest to ninety days, before the recycle bin or trash folders are emptied.⚡ To add, you have most likely also signed on the dotted lines to the effect that the cloud services provider has admonished you most fervently to have your own solid back up arrangements! Quite handy in the case of litigations, that will leave you properly rolled over. 😕 A purposeful and effective backup arrangement, howsoever you arrange it, fanciful or not, is a literal stitch in time that saves nine. 😁 It is something every business owner should make sure that they have in place and that it is maintained in a scalable business process deployable state, for that eventual rainy day. 🦔 💊 Check out the below link to my blog on the subject. ⬇ Do you systematically back up your business data and applications, and if so, what media do you use? ✅ Also please remember to share the subject of this post with your entourage.✅ #Cybersecurity #ISMS #BusinessContinuity #CyberAttacks #DataProtection #CyberResilience #InfoSec #DisasterRecoveryPlan #DRP #Backup #cyberBreaches #incidentResponse #crisisManagement

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