Category: For technologists

There’s no denying that castle walls play a prominent role in the histories of both military defense, going back thousands of years, and — as of the start of the current millennia — in cybersecurity.

Related: How Putin has weaponized ransomware

In his new Polity Press book, The Guarded Age, Fortification in the Twenty-First Century, David J. Betz, delves into historic nuances, on the military side, and posits important questions about the implications for cybersecurity, indeed, for civilization, going forward.

Betz is Professor of War in the Modern World at Kings College London. I asked him about how and why certain fundamental components of ancient, fortified structures have endured. Below are highlights of our discussion, edited for clarity and length.

LW: You cite many examples of instant castle walls, if you will, getting erected in current-day war zones. How can this be, given modern warfare tactics and smart weaponry?

Betz: Picture a US Army fort during the American Indian wars of the nineteenth century. By the standards of the best weapons and tactics of the day they were ridiculously inadequate. The thing is, though, the Indians against whom they were fighting did not possess the best weapons and tactics of the day.

Against them, wooden marching forts not much different from those built by the Romans two thousand years earlier were perfectly fine. Many of the fortifications that I describe cropping up in current-day war zones are viable for the same reason.

A vast system of Russian field fortifications played a large role in shattering the Ukraine counter offensive last summer.  Or think of the chain of fortified reefs that China has constructed as the central part of its strategy to lay claim to control of the South China Sea.

Likewise, consider the challenge which Hamas’ underground fortification of Gaza presents to the Israel Defense Forces right now, despite its distinct material and tactical advantages. For that matter, Hezbollah’s fortification of southern Lebanon, throughout which it has hidden thousands of rockets in hardened casements, is an even bigger challenge.

LW: You make the point that governments and private industry erect and maintain fortified structures continuously, in ways that would surprise ordinary citizens. How pervasive is this trend?

Betz: As a matter of regulation, installations like airports and port facilities and buildings including schools, shopping malls, hospitals, museums, hotels, sport and entertainment venues, as well as bridges, monuments, and many city streets are hardened against attack by bombing, shooting, or vehicle ramming.

The scale of this effort is quite enormous in money terms. As a small example, the area around the university in which I work, King’s College London, has recently completed a security upgrade, which has seen a major road fully pedestrianized and anti-vehicle barriers installed around the entire periphery. The cost for one urban block: £34 million.

For a larger indicator, consider the global airport security market, which had an estimated value in 2020 of around $11 billion with a projected growth to as much as $25 billion by 2028, of which perimeter security amounts for about a third of total spending. The annual value of the airport operations business in total is reckoned to be around $130 billion, about 20% of which at current rates of growth is consumed by defense.

I could go on. The main point is that the private fortification industry is extremely diverse and highly creative. As an illustrative example, consider the American firm ArmorCore, based in Waco, Texas, which specializes in the making of ballistic-resistant fiberglass panels.

Their products can be found in banks, government offices, critical infrastructure facilities, hospitals, police stations and courthouses, a range of military uses including army recruitment centers and drill halls, residential construction of all types, safe rooms, and schools.

Basically, if you interact with any of these sorts of places you will have encountered the products of ArmorCore, or of hundreds of other similar companies operating in this sector.

LW: Are you suggesting this trend will continue, or perhaps accelerate? What are the drivers?

Betz: Yes, I expect that this trend has a good long way to run yet. Ultimately, one might argue that fortification is the time-honored human response to the fear of being attacked.

Poor and working-class people build walls studded with glass around their homes, install bars, and strengthen their doors because they genuinely fear home invasion. Rich people build more luxurious fortified compounds because they can afford luxury on top of security.

Corporations fortify their headquarters and store their computer servers in ex-military munitions bunkers and deep underground caverns because of their judgment of the likelihood of attack and potential loss.

LW: World Wars I and II made classic fortified structures, like the Maginot Line, obsolete. Similarly, the rise of cloud-connected digital services made on-premise network defenses, like classic firewalls, obsolete. Can you extend that comparison?

Betz: I confess you hit a bit of a sore spot with the remark about the Maginot Line being shown to be obsolete. The maligned Maginot Line failed because it was bypassed. In the few instances it was fought over, its powers of resistance, even with low-quality garrison troops, was very high.

Today the fortification industry is a massive, growing market. The annual value of the global data security market was $187.35 billion 2020, projected to rise to $517.17 billion by 2030.The investment in target hardening of data centers is only a fraction of those numbers but is likely large.

Indeed, it is because of the demand of data security that there has been a huge growth in a heretofore very niche sector of the real estate market, specifically abandoned mines, large natural caverns, and ex-military bunkers.

In Britain, a company known as The Bunker operates two ultra-high-security facilities, one in Kent and the other in Newbury, both based on ex-military nuclear shelters. Of the former site, Colo-X, which is a British brokerage company specializing in data centers, enthuses:

‘The entire complex is located underground and was built to withstand a 22-kiloton nuclear blast! Thus, with 3m-thick concrete walls and up to 100 feet underground, the building sits on rubber buffer strips to absorb shocks and each room is Faraday caged, with blast doors in the corridors.’

Betz

You made an allusion to a modern military fortification with the Maginot Line. I would suggest, a better analog is very much older than that. The very ancient hillforts and palisaded villages built by those first humans to develop settled agriculture packed their strongholds with hand tools, ploughs, seeds, and livestock—everything that they needed to continue functioning as an agricultural society after an attack by their nomadic neighbors.

The essential infrastructure of the knowledge economies of the information age rests on a different foundation of delicate physical stuff—computers, routers, fiberoptic cables, and such like—but it all needs to be guarded all the same, and essentially how we do that is rather the same still.

LW: I absolutely agree with you that the fortification zeitgeist, as you put it, runs counter to the openness of digital systems that hyperconnectivity requires. So where do we go from here?

Betz: You ask a highly pertinent and vexing question. The most honest answer is I don’t know. If I may, though, I would suggest a few things.

One, in all the history which I explore in my book it might be said that there is something of a cycle or pendulum. For a time, the power of weapons seems to drive the idea of static defense into retreat, only then to swing back in the favor of defense making the idea of offense seem futile. We are closer to the beginning of the fortification zeitgeist than towards the end. Ultimately, though, the trend will slow and reverse again.

Two, while I think that the perils of openness and hyperconnectivity have become very evident to many people. Much of what I have observed in the book I would consider an overreaction. A paranoiac society firmly locked down behind stout walls, ubiquitously digitally filed, monitored, and regulated is not one in which I wish to live. I cannot pretend though that we are not on the trajectory toward such a society.

Third, on an individual and unconscious level I think that a great deal of what is driving the developments which I have described is a reaction to the frenetic pace of change of the last generation. It is not just that things are moving fast, it is also that the pace of change is accelerating. The natural response is to hold on tightly to something solid—and there’s nothing more solid than a fort.

Acohido

Pulitzer Prize-winning business journalist Byron V. Acohido is dedicated to fostering public awareness about how to make the Internet as private and secure as it ought to be.

 

Each of us has probably sat through some level of cybersecurity awareness training during our professional lives.

Related: Dangers of spoofed QR codes

Stop and think before you click on a link within an email from an unexpected source. Don’t re-use a password across multiple sites. Beware over-sharing personal information online, especially on social media platforms. All good advice!

When we sit back and think about the target audience for this training, much of this advice is designed to reach the busy or distracted employee who postpones laptop software updates or who copies sensitive or who copies proprietary information to a USB stick and takes it home.

Irresistible lure

This classic take-a-USB-stick-home scenario has been around for a couple of decades. The careless employee places the information on that stick at considerable risk of theft or even outright loss. But have you thought about the potential impact of an adversary introducing a USB stick to a curious employee?

Consider an employee who leaves the office or the house in the middle of the day to grab lunch somewhere nearby. They place their order, get their food, and because it’s a nice day, they grab a table outside.

But today’s lunch run has a new ingredient: a lonely, presumably lost USB stick sitting on the ground. Even better, there is an especially delicious label on the stick: “Upcoming RIF” or “Executive Strategy PPT” or “Post-Acquisition Plans?”

Dedicated adversaries

Smith

Sound far-fetched? Think about this from the perspective of the bad guys. Most companies have multiple IT/security layers of defense in place designed to keep bad actors out, and to prevent good actors inside the company from making mistakes. If a bad actor can’t get in through the front door, maybe there is some other way to initiate an attack.

Wouldn’t a dedicated adversary consider a location known to be visited by employees of the company they are targeting, like a nearby restaurant where many employees eat daily? Or how about a USB stick left at some other plausible location like a hotel or your local print shop?

The employee picks up the stick, carries it back into the office, and plugs it in. The malware installs itself to the now-infected laptop, and the attack is underway.

In most cases, determining how the malware gets onto one of your machines takes a back seat to remediating, or cleaning up, that infected machine. You need to put out that fire as quickly as you can, before that fire spreads across the network to other machines and servers.

Staged attacks

If there is any good news in this scenario, it’s this: most malware is designed to communicate back to the adversary at some stage of the cyberattack. Perhaps it needs to contact the mother ship which may have additional instructions or code for that malware to deliver.

That initial broadcast or beaconing message is often a simple one, announcing the equivalent of “I’ve been installed successfully, what’s the next step?” Or perhaps the malware has already completed its mission and is ready to send out or exfiltrate the information it has collected.

Ongoing forensics

It’s at this critical stage that comprehensive, real-time visibility across your environment is so important. Many organizations keep logs sourced from devices and applications scattered throughout their IT environment; depending on your industry, this may be a regulatory requirement. But logs are not nearly enough.

Mature organizations are also collecting and storing their network traffic for potential forensic use in support of a future investigation. It’s very powerful to be able to produce an authoritative answer to the question, “What network traffic was moving through this part of my infrastructure ten days ago?” Being able to “replay” that activity is often the only way to piece together what was actually happening as the attack rolled forward.

Factor this scenario into your awareness training, and more importantly, ensure that the visibility you have into your environment is not just a collection of logs. Network-level visibility is the highest-fidelity source available to you and your security team today. Only by seeing what’s on your network, both right now and from the recent past, can you detect and respond to real-time incidents in the fastest and most comprehensive way.

About the essayist: Ben Smith is Field Chief Technology Officer with NetWitness, a threat detection and response firm. His prior employers include RSA Security, UUNET, and the US Government, along with several technology startups.

To sell us more goods and services, the algorithms of Google, Facebook and Amazon exhaustively parse our digital footprints.

Related: The role of ‘attribute based encryption’

There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with companies seeking to better understand their customers. However, over the past 20 years the practice of analyzing user data hasn’t advanced much beyond serving the business models of these tech giants.

That could be about to change. Scientists at NTT Research are working on an advanced type of cryptography that enables businesses to perform aggregate data analysis on user data — without infringing upon individual privacy rights.

I had the chance to visit with , senior scientist at NTT Research’s Cryptography & Information Security (CIS) Lab, to learn more about the progress being made on a promising concept called “privacy preserving aggregate statistics.”

Rising data privacy regulations underscores the need for such a capability, Boyle told me. And in the long run, the capacity to analyze our online behaviors in a much more inspired, respectful way could serve a much greater good than just fostering impulsive consumer purchases. For a full drill down, please view the accompanying videocast. Here are a few key takeaways:

Rising regulations

It’s not just the tech giants that have a strategic imperative to better understand user behaviors. Companies across all industries have long sought to better understand how consumers use their product and services; this guides their product improvements and can dictate future investments, often shaping the next big innovations.

Our smartphones, wearables, vehicles and buildings have come to be saturated with sensors that collect granular information about our daily activities and provide a wellspring of information about what we prefer and how we behave. However, this intensive ingestion of personal data points — in the absence of reasonable oversight — has triggered consumer anxiety, and rightly so.

This, in turn, has led to rising data privacy regulations. Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California’s Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA,) for instance, are two significant pieces of legislation aimed at protecting consumer privacy in the digital age. Both regulations have profound implications for companies seeking to collect and apply aggregate statistical analysis to consumer data.

GDPR requires companies to establish a legal basis for data processing as well as ensure that the aggregation and anonymization methods protect individual identities. Meanwhile, CCPA focuses on ensuring that personal information isn’t sold without the consumer’s knowledge or against their will.

Partitioning user data

So now the rub is this: companies yearn to extract useful insights from user data, yet many have lost sight of the fact that it’s going to become much more expensive for them to possess granular tracking details, going forward. This has led NTT Research to seek a way to enable businesses to perform aggregate data analysis on consumer data — with privacy built in, Boyle says.

Privacy preserving aggregate statistics revolves around partitioning sensitive user data into pieces, which each on their own tells nothing about the original, but we can perform meaningful computations on the pieces, which can eventually be recombined. Boyle explained how a private telemetry system can be set up to split sensitive user data into two segments in such manner.

One segment retains broad, general information, useful for tracking usage patterns; the other segment converts the individual’s private details into a  random sequence of zeros and ones. As more data pours in from other users the former gets aggregated to give shape to emerging patterns, while the latter remains incomprehensible, ensuring that individual privacy remains sacrosanct.

Beyond meeting compliance, this approach can improve the bottom line, she says, by significantly reducing the cost associated with collecting and storing sensitive personal data. In addition to developing and getting in position to supply the technology, Boyle says.

“The goal is to develop solutions that allow us to only learn aggregate information, while never touching the data of individuals, in some sense, by taking private information and splitting it into pieces,” she says. “The tricky part is designing this splitting procedure so that you can actually compute on these pieces separately.”

A greater good

In a world that’s becoming increasingly cautious about data privacy, this new twist to data analysis could help businesses comply with privacy regulations and temper consumer anxiety. It could also provide a means for businesses to gain data-driven insights in a more efficient, respectful, way.

Boyle

Boyle pointed out how companies across all industries — healthcare, financial services, energy and consumer goods – could immediately leverage this new approach in way that would allow them to begin to extract much more useful insights from the data lakes of consumer data swelling somewhat randomly.

They’d be able to examine the steadily rising influx of consumer data at a summarized level and discover overall patterns and trends. NTT Research, for instance, has successfully tested advanced privacy-preserving computations on common benchmarking tools like histograms, mean vs. standard deviations, maximums vs. minimums, topmost common values and more.

That’s just a starting point. As the type of advanced cryptography moves into mainstream use, it has the potential to inspire innovators to leverage our digital footprints for more than just tweaking advertisements.

In one project, for instance, social scientists in Boston applied privacy-preserving computations to wages and benefits data for employees across several companies to determine whether there was a wage gap between males and females.

It’s not hard to imagine how privacy-preserving statistical analysis could help climatologists better understand energy usage patterns, or medical researchers track the spread of a disease.

“Being able to somehow combine this information and learn something globally across it can have tremendous power,” Boyle says. “It’s very exciting to be in a position where mathematical concepts like abstract algebra actually play a role in designing logical systems that help solve big problems.”

The transformation progresses. I’ll keep watch and keep reporting.

Acohido

Pulitzer Prize-winning business journalist Byron V. Acohido is dedicated to fostering public awareness about how to make the Internet as private and secure as it ought to be.

(LW provides consulting services to the vendors we cover.)

New York, NY, Jan. 22, 2024 —  Memcyco Inc, the real-time digital impersonation detection and prevention solution provider, and Deloitte, the leading consulting, advisory, and audit services firm, today announced their strategic partnership in the cybersecurity sector.

The partnership enables Deloitte to extend this range of solutions offering customers Memcyco’s industry-leading anti-impersonation software. The solutions will be offered globally in regions such as the EMEA, LATAM, USA, and others.

Deloitte and Memcyco’s pivotal collaboration combines the former’s consulting expertise with the latter’s cutting-edge platform for detecting and preventing digital impersonation fraud in real time. This alliance will elevate fraud prevention to a new level, helping government organizations, enterprises, and brands protect themselves from damage and safeguard their reputations from being tarnished through attacks that use phishing sites to target their customers.

By virtue of their partnership, Memcyco and Deloitte will leverage additional solutions related to integration and cooperation, such as Deloitte’s Strategic & Reputation Risk Services. This multidisciplinary synergy ensures a holistic response to threats, capitalizing on each organization’s area of expertise and accumulated experience, thus offering more robust and complete solutions to clients.

Memcyco provides a platform for real-time detection, protection, and response to online impersonation attacks, whereby malicious actors use phishing, smishing, and other techniques to direct customers to fake pages that look and feel much like the real thing. These attacks trick users into giving up their personal data, such as login credentials and credit card information, which is subsequently used for ATO (account takeover) and other online attacks, leading to data breaches, theft of funds, and ransomware.

Unlike other solutions, Memcyco is singularly able to safeguard the “window of exposure” between when a fake website goes live and when the attacker attempts to use stolen data to access company web pages, using real-time alerts to warn users not to trust the spoofed site, as well as tracking attacker and victim activity. Addressing this window is crucial for organizations to be able to protect themselves from data breaches, financial losses, and reputational damage while protecting their customers from identity theft and financial harm.

Memcyco also provides organizations with full insight into attacks, including a list of all victims. This data not only gives the organization improved visibility, but also helps risk engines to predict fraud more accurately, thereby significantly decreasing remediation costs.

Mazin

“Memcyco is delighted to build a partnership with Deloitte due to its dedicated team, expertise, and innovation capabilities,” said Israel Mazin, CEO of Memcyco. “Our shared commitment to empowering organizations to make informed decisions about their cybersecurity strategy is at the heart of our collaboration. In the long term, this partnership will pave the way for organizations of all sizes to mitigate impersonation and brandjacking attacks and to gain more trust from their customers.”

Memcyco will showcase its solutions at the third annual Deloitte Cyber iCON event in Spain on Jan 23, 2024. Cyber iCON allows businesses to gain first-hand knowledge about the most prevalent and sophisticated cyber threats they face today. Attendees will be able to learn about the latest strategies and countermeasures they can employ to safeguard themselves against advanced threats via real-world, interactive scenarios. Memcyco’s representatives will join Deloitte’s experts on-stage to discuss the dangers presented by digital impersonation and to introduce businesses to their comprehensive solution for mitigating such risks. Memcyco will also participate in a joint panel discussion and presentation alongside Deloitte’s expert cybersecurity consultants.

About Memcyco: Memcyco provides real-time digital impersonation detection, protection and response solutions to companies and their customers. Their real-time, agentless solutions are unique in fully safeguarding the critical “window of exposure” between when a fake site goes live and when an attacker attempts to use stolen data to access company web-pages. Memcyco alerts users who visit fake sites and gives organizations complete visibility into the attack, allowing them to take remediating actions. Led by industry veterans, Memcyco is committed to ensuring the security and digital trust of its customers – and of their customers. For more information, visit www.memcyco.com/.

About Deloitte: Deloitte has contributed to the development of business organizations and society during its more than 175 years of history. Faced with a constantly evolving reality, it has established itself as the advisor of reference for the transformation of large national and multinational companies using a multidisciplinary approach based on excellence, technological innovation and the continuous development of the talent of its professionals, maintaining its position as a leading professional services firm. The organization has strengthened its position by impacting clients, communities and people through the Make an impact that matters initiative, which is implemented in social action programs -WorldClass-, action against climate change -WorldClimate-, and its ALL IN diversity and inclusion strategy. Globally, the firm is present in more than 150 countries, where more than 345,000 professionals work. Learn more at: www.deloitte.com/. 

Media contact: Sheena Kretzmer, sheena@memcyco.com.

Russia’s asymmetrical cyber-attacks have been a well-documented, rising global concern for most of the 2000s.

Related: Cybersecurity takeaways of 2023

I recently visited with Mihoko Matsubara, Chief Cybersecurity Strategist at NTT to discuss why this worry has climbed steadily over the past few years – and is likely to intensify in 2024.

The wider context is all too easy to overlook. Infamous cyber opsattributed to Russia-backed hackers fall into a pattern that’s worth noting:

•Cyber attacks on Estonia (2007) Websites of Estonian banks, media outlets and government bodies get knocked down in a dispute over a Soviet-era war memorial.

•Cyber attacks on Georgia (2008, 2019) Georgian government websites get defaced; thousands of government and private websites get blocked, including two major TV stations.

•Ukrainian power grid take downs (2015, 2016) The capitol city of Kyiv suffers widespread, extended outages.

•U.S. presidential election interference (2016) The personal accounts of Clinton staffers get hacked; disinformation supporting Trump gets widely disseminated via social media.

•French presidential election Interference (2017) Leaks and fake news is similarly spread in attempts to influence the presidential election.

•Solar Winds hack (2020) Supply chain connections for thousands of federal agencies and large enterprises get swiftly, deeply compromised.

-•MOVEit hack (2023) File sharing hook-ups for thousands of enterprises get compromised, triggering class action lawsuits.

It’s not just Russia. Other milestone nation-state cyber-attacks include Titan Rain (China 2003 – 2006,) Stuxnet (U.S and Israel, 2005 – 2010,) Operation Aurora (China, 2009,) the Sony Pictures hack (North Korea, 2015,) and WannaCry (North Korea, 2017.)

Matsubara

Matsubara is a former Japanese Ministry of Defense official who previously served as Palo Alto Networks’ VP and Public Sector Chief Security Officer for Asia-Pacific and, before that, as Intel’s Cyber Security Policy Director. We discussed how Russia in 2023 began synchronizing asymmetrical attacks with kinetic military operations — targeting Ukraine’s infrastructure with both missile strikes and advanced power grid hacks.

Matsubara warns that geopolitical tension often entails cyber espionage and disruption. Such a playbook could come into play in the Middle East and Taiwan as well.

For a full drill down, please view the accompanying videocast.

Looking ahead to 2024 and beyond, Matsubara observes that company leaders would do well look beyond basic cyber hygiene and adopt a more holistic approach to protecting their networks.

Given geopolitical conflicts of the moment, pressure from adversaries isexpected to intensify, going forward. Regulators are responding by implementing stricter data privacy and supply chain security standards. This means company leaders must do their due diligence.

The good news is that AI is coming into play across the board — in cybersecurity innovations to harden software code, manage cloud access and even make encryption more flexible and resilient. Company leaders can and should lean into AI as they select and implement leading-edge security tools and services, she says.

For small and medium-sized organizations that lack the resources of large enterprises, the challenge is acute, as their role in the supply chain makes them prime targets for strategic cyber disruptions. Matsubara sees managed security services as a lifeline enabling smaller companies to cost-effectively boost their cyber resiliency.

Company decision makers responsible for cybersecurity certainly have their plates full in the coming year. I’ll keep watch and keep reporting.

Acohido

Pulitzer Prize-winning business journalist Byron V. Acohido is dedicated to fostering public awareness about how to make the Internet as private and secure as it ought to be.

(LW provides consulting services to the vendors we cover.)

 

Here’s the final installment of leading technologists sharing their observations about cybersecurity developments in the year that’s coming to a close — and the year to come. Last Watchdog posed two questions:

•What should be my biggest takeaway from 2023, with respect to mitigating cyber risks at my organization?

•What should I be most concerned about – and focus on – in 2024?

Their guidance:

Snehal Antani, CEO, Horizon3.ai

Antani

Many speculated that the ransomware attack on a Toyota supply chain player in Kojima, Japan was in retaliation for Japan’s aid to Ukraine. Nearly $400 million was lost as 28 Toyota production lines shut down.

The cyber threat landscape is evolving rapidly. Generative AI is expected to supercharge the velocity and precision of attacks. Our defensive strategies must evolve. Our success will hinge on deploying AI in a way that not only matches, but anticipates and outmaneuvers, the threat actors’ evolving tactics.

Rebecca Krauthamer, Co-founder and CPO, QuSecure

Krauthamer

As new standards for quantum-resilient cryptography come into effect, many government agencies will move toward quantum-readiness. Cryptographic inventories need finalizing and quantum safe encryption needs to be adopted for sensitive communications and data. Consumers will begin to see their favorite applications touting “quantum-secure encryption.”

CISOs will have to get quantum resilient encryption on their cyber roadmap. “Crypto agility orchestration” holds promise of taking us beyond this cryptography upgrade to resilience in the face of evolving threats to encryption.

Alex Rice, Co-founder & CTO, HackerOne

Rice

Over the next year, we’ll see many overly optimistic companies place too much trust in generative AI. GenAI holds immense potential to supercharge productivity, but if you forget basic security hygiene, you’re opening yourself up to significant risk.

The best solution I see to ensure the safe implementation of GenAI is to strike a balance: organizations must remain measured and conservative in their adoption and application of AI. For now, AI is the copilot and humans remain irreplaceable in the cybersecurity equation.

Mehran Farimani, CEO, RapidFort

Farimani

A wide range of vulnerabilities are being introduced by AI development tools. The federal government, specifically the Defense Industrial Base (DIB,) which consists of 300,000 contractors, is struggling to keep up. According to Merrill Research, only 19 percent of them have any vulnerability management solutions in place. In 2024, security teams will need to focus on developing automated tooling to shrink the range of issues that they need to address.

Jeremy Snyder, CEO, FireTail

Snyder

In 2024, human error-based public cloud exposures will continue to decline and AI will actually help reduce noise for detection and response — and make it much easier for humans to process alerts.

But business logic abuse may get worse.  Many API vulnerabilities also expose business logic functions in the software. In 2024, we are likely to see an API-based attack that will go undetected for a long period of time because it doesn’t seek to breach data, but rather to abuse the application logic.

Doug Dooley, COO,  Data Theorem

Dooley

2024 will be the year of full-stack visualization. Generative AI tools like ChatGPT, GPT-4 Turbo and others will help developers build and deploy more applications faster. But they also increase the potential for security flaws and data privacy violations. IT teams will need to visibly inventory all of their cloud applications and APIs in order to ensure compliance and security. The challenge is around discovery, security testing, protection and the visual understanding of the interconnected nature of this modern software.

Nick Mistry, SVP, CISO, Lineaje

Mistry

The software landscape is poised for significant changes, with a growing emphasis on Software Bill of Materials (SBOM.) As concerns about supply chain attacks continue to escalate, compliance measures will tighten.

The proactive adoption of SBOMS is a response to heightened awareness and a crucial step in securing the software supply chain. There will be an increase in compliance requirements, like U.S. Executive Order 14028, across the globe.

Matt Wilson, Principal Product Manager, SynSaber

Wilson

In 2023, we witnessed a renewed focus on asset discovery and monitoring. This start-with-the-basics momentum will carry into 2024. No one would be shocked if 2024 included more talk of regulation. For one, NERC-CIP is under pressure to clarify acceptable cloud data storage uses for bulk electricity providers. Another important thing to watch in 2024 will be whether government funding is made available to help support the critical infrastructure sectors that need financial assistance with their cybersecurity transformations.

Eric Avigdor, VP of Product, Votiro

Avigdor

The year coming to a close has shown us that the data protection space is flooded with isolated point products that do not integrate well. In the next year, we will see a strong market push for tighter integration and preference for platforms that address multiple use cases vs. point solutions. This will most probably lead to M&A within this space, for instance, Palo Alto Networks recently acquired Dig Security.

Wayne Schepens, Chief Cyber Market Analyst, CyberRisk Alliance

Schepens

The weakest link is still humans; attacks caused by social engineering remain a critical risk for all organizations. In 2024 I encourage leadership to dedicate more attention to discussing the risks of spear phishing. Young employees eager to prove their metal are particularly at risk. Leaders must foster a culture where employees feel comfortable surfacing security issues. Educate your workforce. Encourage them to share information. Ensure they know where to escalate concerns if they find themselves trapped.

Calvin Carpenter, Product Marketing Manager,  Hughes

Carpenter

Generative AI has lowered the barrier of entry for cybercriminals, who can now use it to write malicious code and make more believable phishing emails. In 2024, a layered approach to cybersecurity will become even more essential. This means implementing multiple security controls including multifactor authentication (MFA), MDR or EDR, securing and well-maintaining backups, implementing Zero Trust architecture, and having ready swift, decisive incident response measures.

Stephen Helm, Director of Product Marketing, Nisos

Helm

Behind every cyber attack is a human with a motive, yet the focus remains on what amounts to the tools of the trade. 2023 drove home the importance of seeing your organization through the eyes of an adversary; this helps align resources with the right risks and avoids wasting time on low-priority threats. In 2024, the lines between nation-state actors, criminal groups, and low-level adversaries will continue to blur. With geopolitical waters becoming more turbulent, the stakes for threat actors and organizations are higher than ever.

Acohido

Pulitzer Prize-winning business journalist Byron V. Acohido is dedicated to fostering public awareness about how to make the Internet as private and secure as it ought to be.

(LW provides consulting services to the vendors we cover.)

Notable progress was made in 2023 in the quest to elevate Digital Trust.

Related: Why IoT standards matter

Digital Trust refers to the level of confidence both businesses and consumers hold in digital products and services – not just that they are suitably reliable, but also that they are as private and secure as they need to be.

We’re not yet at a level of Digital Trust needed to bring the next generation of connected IT into full fruition – and the target keeps moving. This is because the hyper interconnected, highly interoperable buildings, transportation systems and utilities of the near future must necessarily spew forth trillions of new digital connections.

And each new digital connection must be trustworthy. Therein lies the monumental challenge of achieving the level of  Digital Trust needed to carry us forward. And at this moment, wild cards – especially generative AI and quantum computing — are adding to the complexity of that challenge.

I had the opportunity to sit down with DigiCert’s Jason Sabin, Chief Technology Officer and Avesta Hojjati, Vice President of Engineering to chew this over. We met at DigiCert Trust Summit 2023.

We drilled down on a few significant developments expected to play out in 2024 and beyond. Here are my takeaways:

PKI renaissance

Trusted digital connections. This is something we’ve come to take for  granted. And while most of our digital connections are, indeed, robustly protected, a material percentage are not; these range from loosely configured cloud IT infrastructure down to multiplying API connectors that many companies are leaving wide open, all too many APIs simply going unaccounted for.

Each time we use a mobile app or website-hosted service, digital certificates and the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) come into play — to assure authentication and encrypt sensitive data transfers. This is a fundamental component of Digital Trust – and the foundation for securing next-gen digital connections.

The goal is lofty: companies and consumers need to feel very confident that each device, each document, and each line of code can be trusted implicitly. And PKI is the best technology we’ve got to get us there.

Sabin

“PKI has been around for 30 years in lots of different reincarnations,” Sabin noted. “We’re hitting a massive resurgence, almost a renaissance of PKI right now, because there are so many use cases where the simple ingredients of PKI can be used very effectively to solve the business needs of today.”

Enter the concept of “cryptographic agility” —  a reference to the rise of a new, much more flexible approach to encrypting digital assets. Crypto agility has arisen because digital connections are firing off more dynamically than ever before. Thus companies increasingly require the ability to update encrypted assets in a timely manner and even switch them out as needed, Sabin says.

Post-quantum crypto

A high level of Digital Trust, one that leverages crypto agility, is needed for companies to thrive in environment where cyber attacks are becoming more targeted and severe – and with generative AI providing a great boon to the attackers.

What’s more, a fresh layer of risks posed by the rise of quantum computing looms large. And this is were something called “post-quantum cryptography” (PQC) comes into play.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is in the late stages of formally adopting established standards for PQC; this will result in NIST-recommended encryption algorithms that can withstand potential threats posed by quantum computers.

Sabin pointed me to a recent Ponemon Institute polling of 1,426 IT security pros that reveals a worrying lack of PQC-readiness among companies across the US, Europe, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific. The survey found a skills shortage, budget constraints and uncertainty about PQC causing some 61 percent of respondents to acknowledge that their organizations are not prepared.

Yet quantum computing exposures are happening today. Threat actors are pursuing a “harvest now, decrypt later” strategy, Savin told me. They’re hoarding stolen cyber assets encrypted with current day algorithms, he says, and patiently waiting for quantum hacking routines to emerge that will enable them to crack in.

PKI playground

To aid and abet the PQC transition, DigiCert has been collaborating with industry partners to develop encryption methods that can withstand the threats posed by quantum computing. DigiCert recently released the DigiCert PQC Playground—a part of DigiCert Labs designed to let security code writers and tech enthusiasts experiment with the NIST-endorsed PQC algorithms which are slated to go into effect in 2024.

Hojjati

Playground visitors can get in the practice of issuing certificates and PKI keys under NIST’s three most advanced encryption algorithms: CRYSTALS-Dilithium, FALCON, and SPHINCS+. Hojjati told me this free tool is intended to be an incubator for development and innovation, demystifying PQC by providing a user-friendly environment for experimentation.

The aim is to alleviate apprehension surrounding the deployment of PQC algorithms and certificates, Hojjati says. This will give software developers, CISOs and other stakeholders a sandbox to test and understand the practical implications of integrating the new NIST algorithms into their systems, he says.

As standards and best practices solidify, a new senior leadership role — , the Chief Digital Trust Officer – has cropped up. The office of CDTO is gaining traction in large enterprises that are proactively pursuing Digital Trust. These new security leaders are not just technologists, Sabin says, they are strategists and visionaries.

“In the last 18 months we’re already seeing a number of companies create this new C-level role, recognizing that Digital Trust is critical to their capabilities, their business objectives and the vision of the company,” Sabin says.

A we turn the corner into 2024, Digital Trust is in sight. I’ll keep watch and keep reporting.

Acohido

Pulitzer Prize-winning business journalist Byron V. Acohido is dedicated to fostering public awareness about how to make the Internet as private and secure as it ought to be.

(LW provides consulting services to the vendors we cover.)

 

A look back at the cybersecurity landscape in 2023 rings all-too familiar: cyber threats rapidly evolved and scaled up, just as they have, year-to-year, for the past 20 years.

Related: Adopting an assume-breach mindset

With that in mind, Last Watchdog invited the cybersecurity experts we’ve worked with this past year for their perspectives on  two questions that all company leaders should have top of mind:

•What should be my biggest takeaway from 2023, with respect to mitigating cyber risks at my organization?

•What should I be most concerned about – and focus on – in 2024?

The comments we received were uniformly insightful and helpful. Here is part one of three groupings. Parts two and three to follow on Thursday and Friday.

Eyal Benishti, CEO, IRONSCALES

Benishti

Generative AI (GenAI) reshaped cybersecurity in 2023. Hackers now leverage GenAI to launch targeted attacks that bypass traditional security systems.

In 2024, we will see more targeted, sophisticated business email compromise (BEC) attacks, including VIP impersonation, vendor email compromise (VEC), and autonomous agents used for malicious purposes. At the same time, we’ll see cybercriminals pivot to the use of QR codes and images to sidestep natural language processing (NLP) defenses. Organizations should likewise leverage GenAI to better detect AI-enhanced threats and counter the attack volumes that we expect to see in 2024.

Adam Burris, Senior Director of Threat Detection and Response, Gurucul

Burris

Recent research shows that more than half of organizations have experienced an insider threat in the past year and 68percent are “very concerned” about insider threats as they return to the office or move to hybrid work.

In 2024, public infrastructure around the world will be increasingly targeted by nation-state actors involved in geopolitical conflicts. This means security vendors should create multi-tenant solutions that integrate easily with other security vendors’ products and cover both cloud and on-premise environments with flexible licensing and billing models and dedicated programs.

Avkash Kathiriya, Sr. VP Research and Innovation, Cyware

Kathiriya

The pace of change is accelerating faster than at any time in recent years. Traditional SIEMs are losing ground to newer platforms optimized for handling large volumes of fast-moving security data and providing greater agility, scalability and real-time threat analytics.

Expect further consolidation between security solutions like SIEM, SOAR and data lakes. Integration will also increase between security tools and IT systems to enable smarter orchestration; most important of all, organizations will harness AI to stay ahead of increasingly sophisticated AI-driven attacks.

Raffaele Mauton, CEO, Judy Security

Mautone

A main takeaway from 2023 is the importance of staying vigilant and adaptable. Ongoing education and skill development requires educating teams and ensuring employees become proactive contributors to organizational defense. Moving ahead, it’s crucial for SMBs, municipalities and healthcare institutions to prioritize. Focus on implementing robust backup and disaster recovery plans, user training, and the sharing of threat intelligence. Stay informed about AI developments and explore how your business can benefit from advancements in the public sector – and be mindful of the consumerization of AI-enabled fraud.

Camellia Chan, Co-Founder and CEO, Flexxon

Chan

In a single month, major breaches hit MGM, DP World Australia, Philippine Health Insurance – just to name a few. The common thread: the exploitation of human error, coupled with the failure of cybersecurity systems that use reactive processes and rely on individuals acting as the gatekeepers. This is folly. We must move towards proactive measures; this is essential across the entire IT infrastructure. Proactive, intuitive and autonomous cybersecurity protection across all seven layers,  from the physical to application layer,  is essential. Businesses can no longer afford to leave any layer unprotected.

John Benkert, CEO, Cigent Technologies

Benkert

A crucial takeaway from 2023 is the recognition that traditional cybersecurity strategies are no longer sufficient, necessitating a shift from reactive to proactive security measures . . . The “trust but verify” approach is no longer viable in a landscape where threats can originate from anywhere. Implementing a Zero Trust architecture involves verifying every attempt to access the system. Regular security audits, staying abreast of the latest cyber threats, and investing in continuous improvements to your cybersecurity infrastructure are vital. It’s also crucial to have an effective incident response plan in place.

David Ratner, CEO at HYAS

Ratner

Gone are the days where anyone should feel confident  they can keep bad actors out. Supply-chain attacks, new zero-day attacks, insider risk and improved phishing leads to an onslaught of breaches. IT leadership should be shifting to operational resiliency. Just because a bad actor breaches the network doesn’t mean that the attack needs to result in damage or stolen data. It’s critical to ensure that breaches can be stopped before they expand through the organization and cause financial, reputational, and other damage.

Sameer Malhotra, CEO,  TrueFort:

Malhotra

Software supply chain attacks will continue to place more responsibility and accountability on DevSecOps teams. DevOps and DevSecOps staff will need to place greater emphasis on monitoring third-party libraries and tools used in software development for security vulnerabilities. Since third party software is often used in trusted applications, many of which have administrator or elevated privileges, organizations should also implement microsegmentation to contain the spread and blast radius of attacks.

John Gunn, CEO, Token

Gunn

The carnage from 2023 reveals that legacy mutifactor authentication was the most frequent point of failure. The majority of ransomware attacks gained initial access by defeating legacy MFA.

In 2024, generative AI will usher in a new era in the frequency and sophistication of attacks on MFA, which is already the weakest link in most organizations’ cyber defenses. Phishing attacks driven by ChatGPT will be harder than ever to detect. The worst is yet to come and current methods of securing user logins will no longer be sufficient.

Dick O’Brien, Principal Intelligence Analyst, Symantec Threat Hunters

O’Brien

The Snakefly cybercrime group (aka Clop) advanced extortion attacks in 2023 with their exploitation of the MOVEit Transfer vulnerability. By hitting all of their targets at once, the attackers left little room for the victims to fashion effective defenses.

Look for attackers in general to lean into “tool free” attacks, in which they obtain legitimate access, then abuse the trust granted to authenticated users. They’ll make adept use of social engineering, leverage insider knowledge of systems and workflows and exploit weak cloud configurations and porly implemented multi-factor authentication.

Antonio Sanchez, Principal Cybersecurity Evangelist, Fortra

Sanchez

ChatGPT can now create perfectly crafted phishing emails in just about any language. Meanwhile, short-staffed security teams are working longer hours than ever, which can only  lead to higher burnout rates. To protect their brand, organizations in 2024 will need a layered protection strategy which includes effective security controls and timely threat intelligence. And they’ll have to re-define requirements and widen the net slightly to fill security roles. Managed security services can provide a backstop while in-house teams uplevel their skills.

Mike Kosak, Intelligence Analyst, LastPass.

Kosak

Major technology companies are integrating AI into their security tools to help shorten response times, improve anomaly detection, and automate responses. Concurrently, threat actors are leveraging AI to advance malware development, improve obfuscation, and generate more convincing phishing emails. We can expect both trends to continue and accelerate with some foreseeable consequences, like improved cyber defenses and lowered tech barrier of entry for threat actors — and some not so foreseeable. Regardless, AI will be a major factor in the 2024 cyber threat environment, for better and for worse.

Marco Estrela, Director of Cybersecurity Solutions, Virtual Guardian

Daily cyberattacks in the forms of ransomware, email compromise and social engineering plague our lives with little relief in sight. I really feel as though the bad guys have the upper hand. For 2024, it will take a village! Or rather, an organization! Businesses can’t count on their IT team to save the day. A shift towards a holistic, more collaborative effort, must be taken. Invest in threat intelligence, keep your teams trained up, opt for a defense in layers, and be as flexible as possible.

Anurag Gurtu, CPO, StrikeReady

Gurtu

In 2023, even the most fortified bastions falling victim to the relentless innovation of cyber adversaries. The next focal point for cybersecurity prioritization should be the proactive integration of AI-driven predictive analytics. With adversaries leveraging AI for sophisticated attacks, our defense systems must be equally equipped with advanced algorithms that not only detect but predict and neutralize threats preemptively. 2024 should see us doubling down on creating AI that enhances security while upholding the highest standards of privacy and ethical considerations

Vince Arneja, Chief Product Officer, CodeSecure

Arneja

Organizations will see an increase in demand for visibility into the software supply chain. This transparency can foster trust with stakeholders and end-users, as businesses can vouch for the security of every software component in their products. This will require the widespread adoption of Software Bills of Material (SBOM) and the ability to generate them. SBOMs provide a clear audit trail of software components, ensuring traceability. If vulnerabilities are discovered, organizations  can quickly identify affected products, leading to rapid responses and solutions, thereby reducing potential damages.

Acohido

Pulitzer Prize-winning business journalist Byron V. Acohido is dedicated to fostering public awareness about how to make the Internet as private and secure as it ought to be.

(LW provides consulting services to the vendors we cover.)

 

 

 

Threat intelligence sharing has come a long way since Valentine’s Day 2015.

Related: How ‘Internet Access Brokers’ fuel ransomware

I happened to be in the audience at Stanford University when President Obama took to the stage to issue an executive order challenging the corporate sector and federal government to start collaborating as true allies.

Obama’s clarion call led to the passage of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, the creation of Information Sharing and Analysis Organizations (ISAOs) and the jump-starting of several private-sector sharing consortiums.

Material progress in threat intel sharing, indeed, has been made. Yet, there remains much leeway for improvements. I had the chance to discuss this with Christopher Budd, director of Sophos X-Ops, the company’s cross-operational task force of security defenders.

Budd explained how Sophos X-Ops is designed to dismantle security silos internally, while also facilitating external sharing, for the greater good.

For a full drill down, please view the accompanying videocast. Here are my takeaways.

Overcoming inertia

Threat actors haven’t been exactly sitting on their laurels. Case in point: fresh intel just released in Sophos’  Active Adversary Report for Security Practitioners discloses how telemetry measuring network activity has begun turning up missing on a grand scale – in nearly 42 percent of the incident response cases examined by Sophos’ analysts between January 2022 and June 2023.

These gaps in telemetry illustrate just how deep and dynamic the cat vs. mouse chase has become; in some 82 percent of these cases the attackers purposefully disabled or wiped out the telemetry to hide their tracks.

“Because of improved network defenses, the attackers are innovating ways to get in and out as fast as they can,” Budd says.  “We’ve been dealing with this arms race for decades; at this point, not only is it an arms race, but it is also a highly caffeinated arms race.”

Budd

Overcoming inertia remains a big challenge, Budd adds. Historically, network security has been marked by siloed security operations; unilateral teams got stood up to carry out email security, vulnerability patching, incident response, etc. — interoperability really wasn’t on anyone’s radar.

Meanwhile, the network attack surface has inexorably expanded, even more so post Covid 19, as companies intensified their reliance on cloud-centric IT resources. And today, with the mainstreaming of next-gen AI tools, attackers enjoy an abundance of viable attack vectors, putting security teams that operate unilaterally at a huge disadvantage.

Joint task force approach

Sophos X-Ops launched in July 2022 to apply a joint task force approach to protecting enterprises in this environment. Budd directs a cross-operational unit linking SophosLabs, Sophos SecOps and SophosAI, bringing together three established teams of seasoned experts.

From this command center perspective, real-world strategic analysis happens continuously and in real time. The task force can deploy leading-edge detection and response tools and leverage the timeliest intelligence. It’s much the same approach that has proven effective time and again in military and emergency response scenarios.

“The benefit of a joint task force model is you maintain excellence and expertise in each domain area,” Budd says. “You don’t dilute the expertise in that domain area; you break down the silos by bringing each piece that you need for that unique threat to build a unique solution.”

The incidence response team, for instance, might zero in on suspicious activity to gather hard evidence that gets turned over to malware experts for deeper analysis. AI specialists might then jump on board to develop an automated mitigation routine, suitable for scaling. And the entire mitigation effort gets added to the overall knowledge base.

This is how the Sophos X-Ops team helped neutralized a recent spike in ransomware attacks against Microsoft SQL servers. The joint task force unraveled how the attackers were able to leverage a fake downloading site and grey-market remote access tools to distribute multiple ransomware families. The campaign was thwarted by pooling resources and jointly analyzing the attackers’ tactics.

 External sharing

It struck me in discussing this with Budd that the joint task force approach directly aligns with Obama’s call for stronger alliances on the part of the good guys. Notably, Sophos X-Ops from day one has actively participated in external sharing, via the Cyber Threat Alliance (CTA)and the Microsoft Active Protections Program (MAPP.)

The CTA is a coalition of some two dozen companies and organizations, led by Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet and Check Point, committed to sharing actionable threat intel in real time. Members proactively share information on emerging threats, malware samples and attack patterns.

With MAPP, Microsoft aims to share fresh vulnerability patching alerts with security vendors before public disclosure. This gives the security vendors a head start in developing patches and affords them a head start in distributing patches. This strengthens the overall Windows ecosystem, Budd noted.

As cyber threats continue to evolve and scale up, the urgency for companies and government agencies to do much more of this is intensifying. The good news is that the advanced technologies and vetted best practices required to completely dismantle security silos as well as to  extend external sharing far and wide, are readily available.

This all aligns with the notion that deeper levels of sharing must coalesce if we are to have any hope of tempering continually rising cyber threats. I’ll keep watch and keep reporting.

Acohido

Pulitzer Prize-winning business journalist Byron V. Acohido is dedicated to fostering public awareness about how to make the Internet as private and secure as it ought to be.

(LW provides consulting services to the vendors we cover.)

 

Throughout 2023, we’ve witnessed numerous significant cyber incidents. One of the largest this year was the MOVEit breach, which impacted various state motor vehicle organizations and exposed driver’s license information for nearly 9.5 million individuals.

Related: The Golden Age of cyber espionage

We have also seen ransomware outbreaks at MGM and Caesar’s Casino, causing losses in the millions of dollars and targeted assaults on the healthcare sector, affecting over 11 million patients.

These attacks are leading to a record number of personally identifiable information posted on the Dark Web, a portion of the internet that is hidden and provides anonymity to its users. Many individuals are curious about the strategies employed by law enforcement agencies to monitor and respond to these threats.

Threat intel sharing

Law enforcement agencies depend on multiple channels to aid their efforts against cyber threats. The primary source is the affected organization or individual. Cybersecurity experts determine the required support level when a cyberattack is reported to a local law enforcement agency. Larger-scale attacks may involve collaboration with various federal agencies for assistance and resolution.

One notable agency is the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA,) often recognized as “America’s Cyber Defense Agency,” which offers extensive resources to support local law enforcement in handling cyberattacks. Reporting these incidents, regardless of size, is crucial in proactively preventing similar cyberattacks for individuals and organizations.

Rogers

Reported attacks help build a threat intelligence feed that organizations and law enforcement agencies monitor worldwide. Threat intelligence information equip agencies with valuable resources, offering immediate or nearly immediate insights into emerging threats, vulnerabilities and cyberattacks. This early warning tool aids in the preparedness of organizations or individuals for an impending cyberattack.

Dark Web presence

Another source that law enforcement agencies monitor is the Dark Web, which has become a haven for illegal activities, allowing cybercrime enterprises to operate on underground forums and websites. Embedded cybercrime units within law enforcement closely track criminal and cyber gangs by tracing their actions on the dark web.

It’s worth noting that numerous attacks are initially reported on this platform, often before an organization becomes aware of the breach. By monitoring the dark web, law enforcement agencies can notify an organization that they may be a victim, allowing for possible incident response to stop the attack from spreading.

Law enforcement agencies also partner with private sector entities like Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and financial institutions to detect and monitor ongoing cyberthreats. ISPs have a critical function as they can observe the network traffic flowing through their systems and promptly report any identified malicious items.

Financial institutions report suspected cybercrime incidents to law enforcement agencies to assist with investigations and the possibility of recovering monetary funds lost during the incident.

Global cooperation

Lastly, one of the most significant partnerships agencies have is the collaboration with international partners. Global law enforcement agencies share information on recent attacks, trends and vulnerabilities. Because cyberattacks have no borders, partnering with other nations has proven to be a dependable source of valuable insights to combat cyber threats.

With the increasing number of cyberattacks worldwide, law enforcement agencies have come to a clear realization regarding the need for cybersecurity experts. These agencies are making considerable strides to strengthen their current cybercrime units by actively recruiting more professionals in the field. This recruitment drive aims to enhance their monitoring capabilities and response to cyberthreats.

One of the most fundamental actions an individual or organization can do to help law enforcement agencies is to report the incident. Fostering a collaborative and proactive relationship between individuals, organizations and law enforcement agencies in the battle against cybercrime is critical to ensure a safer online landscape for everyone.

About the essayist:  Demetrice Rogers, cybersecurity professional and adjunct professor at Tulane University’s School of Professional Advancement.