Experts: Firms Must Consider Internal Cyber Threats
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עברית (Hebrew)
Cyber bad guys come in all shapes and sizes these days. It’s just as likely that the person sitting next to you is the biggest threat to your company’s online security rather than the virtual criminal sitting thousands of miles away.
That’s according to one of the top experts from the Department of Homeland Security in the United States. Douglas Maughan says businesses may be up to speed when it comes to their own IT systems, but any employee with access to a smart device – from phones to tablets and iPads – could pose a security risk of which most companies are not even aware.
Maughan, who is division director of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity division, believes most people volunteer too much personal information online – which leaves not only themselves as individuals open for attack but also potentially the organisations which employ them.
iHLS – Israel Homeland Security
“The bad guys only need one opportunity to exploit,” he said during a visit to Northern Ireland as part in the World Cyber Security Technology Research Summit.
Organised by the Centre for Secure Information Technologies at Queen’s University, the summit attracted top experts from around the world and included insights from Facebook, Intel, McAfee and various governments.
Maughan tells his Belfast audience that complacency is one of the biggest dangers when it comes to cyber security. “There is a general lack of awareness about the need for better security. Nearly everything that you own or come in to contact with – from your phone to your car to a medical device – is really just software, and software is vulnerable, so we need to learn about how we can understand the threats better.”
