Social Media Safety Awareness Tips
Social media provides a way to stay connected and share with others, but did you know that the cyber criminals will also use social media as another technique to conduct their attacks. It is important to protect yourself as well as know the common signs of someone trying to trick or scam you.
Over social media one common method is that cyber criminals will take over someone’s social media account. Once they control the account a criminal will pretend to be the accounts owner and post an urgent message to everyone connected to that account. This message will say they are traveling internationally, and that they were just mugged and desperately need you to send them money.
If you send money, you are not helping your friend you are actually sending money to the criminal. Another common method is similar to phishing email attacks. Cyber criminals post messages attempting to trick you into clicking on a link that takes you to a malicious website.
Watch out for messages that seem urgent suspicious or try to make you feel rushed or afraid. If you receive an odd message from a friend and are not sure if it was really then that sent it call them on the phone to confirm.
Finally, attackers may use software to try and guess your password, if they gain access, they can then use your account to launch attacks on your contacts and friends. Always try protecting each of your social media accounts with a unique strong password and enable two factor authentication whenever possible.
Internet Safety Tips for Parent and Kids [Video]
In a recent interview on the BNC network, I provided a few tips to keep kids safe while online on the Internet. We feel having a set of rules that guides both a child and parent on online usage and expectations makes a lot of sense. It also allows an opportunity for both the parent and child to talk about the components that are in the contract as a way to dialog about the importance of being in the digital world.
You can view a copy of our online agreement here.
Supply Chain Risk Management (SCRM) Explained
Supply chain risk management (SCRM) is the process of identifying, assessing, and mitigating the risks associated with the distributed and interconnected nature of IT products and service supply chain.
Supply chain risks may include insertions of counterfeits, unauthorized production, tampering, theft insertion of malicious software and hardware, as well as poor manufacturing and development practices in the supply chain.
These may lead to loss of sensitive information or cause unsafe situations that could compromise an organization’s mission, personnel or reputation.
The Supply Chain Risk Management Life Cycle
Risk Identification
The only way to address risk is to make sure you’re identifying it in the first place. The first phase of the risk management lifecycle is to establish a risk profile and then enact active monitoring to keep it up to date.
Risk Assessment
Understand what impact a risk event could have on your business. Be aware of those partners who have a significant impact on sales, margins or profit.
Risk Mitigation
Define both preventive action plans and reactive action plans. These are what provide the basis for addressing risk using appropriate measures to secure supply and protect brand.
Types of Supply Chain Risk Management
Cyber Risk
The possibility that your business is harmed by your suppliers’ use of technology.
Financial Risk
The possibility that suppliers will encounter a business scenario that threatens their financial health.
Reputational Risk
The possibility that a supplier will engage in activity that negatively affects your brand perception.
Natural Disaster Risk
The possibility that your supply chain is disrupted by a hurricane, earthquake or other natural hazard.
Man-Made Risk
Man-made risk is the possibility that your supply chain is disrupted by events like fires or explosions.
While there are many SCRM sources of best practices, the NIST makes many publications freely available.
Non-sensitive PII + Sensitive PII = Sensitive PII
Non-sensitive PII refers to any information that is publicly available. If any of the information is combined with sensitive PII, then it would become sensitive PII. Some Examples of Non-sensitive PII are:
- Work phone #
- Work fax #
- Work email address
- Work location
Sensitive PII is personally identifiable information, which if lost, compromised, or disclosed without authorization, could result in substantial harm, embarrassment, inconvenience, or unfairness to an individual. A person’s name in combination with any one of the following:
- Email Address
- Home telephone number
- Place of birth
- Date of birth
- Driver’s license number
- Mother’s maiden name
- Passport number
- Financial, medical, or criminal records
- Biometrics (such as DNA, iris scan, fingerprints)
- Financial/bank account numbers
- Personal or government account credit or debit card number
- Employment information to include ratings, disciplinary actions, performance elements and standards.
Non-Sensitive PII together combined with Sensitive PII = Sensitive PII
Tips for handling PII:
Protect:
Everyone has the responsibility to protect “PII in any form (physical or electronic, sensitive or non-sensitive) from unauthorized disclosure, modification, or destruction in order to ensure its confidentiality, integrity, and availability.”
Destroy:
PII that is no longer needed should be destroyed in order to reduce risk to your organization (follow record retention schedules).
Disclosure:
You should only share sensitive personal information to authorized individuals. If you have doubts about sharing sensitive data, consult with your supervisor or Privacy Manager.
The Civilian Cybersecurity Reserve: A National Guard-like program to address growing cybersecurity vulnerabilities faced by the U.S. government
The SolarWinds cyberattack as well as other recent cyber breaches targeted at the United States has demonstrate the risks of the cyber workforce shortage. Researchers at Cybersecurity Ventures a trusted source for cybersecurity facts, figures, and statistics stated there is currently 3.5 million unfilled cybersecurity jobs globally, which is enough to fill 50 NFL stadiums. In the US alone according to cybersecurity research groups, there are an estimated 315,000 unfilled cybersecurity positions.
As cybersecurity threats and attacks continue to grow in scale, occurrence, and complexity, it’s critical that a solution to address the deficiency is put in place. Unfortunately, the pipeline of security talent isn’t where it needs to be to help curb the widespread of cyber-crimes we are facing. Until we can rectify the quality of education and training of new cyber practitioners and pursue inclusion using STEM programs to include underrepresented groups, the problem will persist.
In fact, in the past few years there has been a zero-percent unemployment rate in cybersecurity and the opportunities in this field are vast.
To help combat this problem, lawmakers want to create a National Guard-like program to address growing cybersecurity vulnerabilities faced by the U.S. government. This would be like a Civilian Cybersecurity Reserve and it would be voluntary and by invitation only. This would allow our national security agencies to have access to the qualified, capable, and service-oriented American talent necessary to respond when an attack occurs.
What are your thoughts in this program? Do you think it is a good idea and it can help with the overall issue? Please share your opinion.
Parent/Child Agreement Contract
Nowadays having an online agreement or a set of rules that guides both a child and parent on online usage and expectations makes a lot of sense. It also allows an opportunity for both the parent and child to talk about the components that are in the contract as a way to dialog about the importance of being in the digital world.
Once the agreement is signed, it is still important for parents to stay engaged in the child’s usage.
Below is a parent/child agreement you can use. Feel free to add or remove items as needed.
