Q&
NICOLAI SOLLING, CTO AT HELP AG
EDITOR’S
i S
oll
ing
,
CTO
at H
el
p AG
N
ew technologies are a beautiful
thing but of course come with a
security price. Arguably, in the last
20 years, there is probably no area that has
had a greater impact on our professional
and personal lives than IT – the Internet
and the devices that we use to consume
new technology.
Moving forward, this will by no means
change. Rather, I believe our dependency will
only increase. Today, Digital Transformation
is not just a business enabler, but also a
key competitive parameter for almost any
organisation. Look at the local supermarket,
INTELLIGENT TECH CHANNELS
Issue 22
which is increasingly getting its delivery
orders through smart applications, or the
way we book a table at a restaurant, or even
a service for our car or a taxi to take us from
point A to point B.
As Digital Transformation is imperative
to business existence and relevance in the
future, being able to secure the processes is
also extremely important.
And it is exactly here that lie the security
challenges of embracing new technologies.
We always focus on functionality features
and think that security is a given, while this
is not the case.
The amount of zero-day vulnerabilities
Help AG’s pen-testers find is a good
reflection of the fact that technology is not
flawless. How one deals with this is what
sets organisations apart, and ultimately this
will decide how securely they can enable
new technologies.
The fact is that every time you
change your use of technology, you have
to put on your thinking hat as to how
this can be abused and then define your
mitigating strategy.
Just think of how we use e-mail today
– we access it from private devices such
as smartphones and tablets and we are all
aware of how much sensitive information
is available in e-mail. So, the risk would be
around data leakage on those devices.
The fact is that every
time you change your
use of technology, you
have to put on your
thinking hat as to how
this can be abused
and then define your
mitigating strategy.
Your mitigating factors should be able
to secure the content on the device, such as
through containerising the application and
being able to delete the data in case the
device is lost, or the user leaves.
Of course, this is just one short example.
Any organisation should think about how
technology can be used and abused and then
they are welcome to contact us to discuss
how it can be secured.
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