INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Enterprise Security
POWERED BY
What the coronavirus outbreak
can teach us about cybersecurity
/////////////////////////////
T
he World Health Organisation and
governments around the world are
grappling with the coronavirus that
has, as of mid-March, infected more than
170,000 people in 157 countries. Predictions
are that it could cause in excess of US$1
trillion of economic damage.
Digital supply chains span continents and
cloud computing has become ubiquitous,
leading to a digital interconnected web
which is fragile and can be easily broken.
The coronavirus has flagged some elements
of basic human nature that come into play
in both a health crisis and a cybersecurity
incident. A deeper look shows striking
similarities between the human responses to
the virus and cybersecurity incidents.
Transparency is critical
Too often, keeping silent exacerbates the
situation and puts business communities
at risk. China has received some backlash,
with reports emerging that the Chinese
government at first played down the risk
of the outbreak. Transparency is a major
contributor to effectively managing the
potential fallout from a viral disease. Similarly,
by the time senior management are made
aware of a serious cyber incident, the
infection has usually been incubating and
Risky behaviour exposes everyone
Researchers found that the tolerated
risky behaviour of consuming exotic animal
parts triggered a single introduction into
humans, which was followed by human-
to-human spread. Similarly, employees
engaging in tolerated risky behaviour, such
as visiting Dark Web sites, can let malware
into the organisation that spreads from one
user to another.
Brian Pinnock, Cybersecurity Specialist
at Mimecast
70
INTELLIGENTCIO
The importance of basic
(security) hygiene
Demand for face masks is surging. But face
masks aren’t as effective as most people
think. Unfortunately, people are drawn to
visible controls rather than invisible ones.
But medical authorities suggest that basic
practices are more effective at preventing
the spread of the virus.
The equivalent in cybersecurity is focusing
on basic controls first. Have effective and
regular patch management practices,
implement controls to detect and prevent
the spread of malware, adopt regular
employee awareness training to equip
people with the appropriate knowledge to
avoid risky behaviour. It is mostly invisible,
but it is a critical layer in the defence
against cybercrime.
Herd immunity and
misinformed complacency
Organisations who can’t or won’t patch and
protect their systems or train their people
are the equivalent of the those who won’t or
can’t vaccinate their families.
spreading in an organisation for weeks or
sometimes months. The organisation can
become the source of further infection via
their own email systems. Cover-ups mostly
don’t work and hide the extent of the
problem to the wider community which leads
to misinformed complacency about risks. In the UK, an auditor general report on
NHS disruptions caused by the WannaCry
virus showed they all had unpatched
or unsupported operating systems. In
addition, other security controls would have
prevented the rapid spread and subsequent
deaths and fiscal costs. But they were
incorrectly configured which allowed the
virus to spread.
Many organisations don’t share
threat intelligence effectively or at all.
Cybercriminals therefore employ the same
attack method repeatedly against multiple
organisations because it keeps working. We can never prevent all infections and we
can never anticipate every eventuality. What
we can do is become more transparent, more
community focused and make ourselves
more resilient. n
www.intelligentcio.com