Confident Cyber Security
Confident Cyber Security, How To Get Started In Cyber Security And Futureproof Your Career, by Jessica Barker, Kogan Page 2020
When you start to feel nervous about your email accounts or your social media transactions, or, heaven forbid, your on-line banking app, then its time to study up and get ready to exert a bit more control because when these cyber security nightmares strike, you may lose it.
But fortunately even if we aren't network engineers, we can cover the landscape and learn how not to get stuck in the land of hackers. Hacks we know about can be huge - in 2018 UpGuard Cyber Risk found more than 540M records of Facebook users had been exposed - passwords, account names, user IDs, and personal info such as interests and relationship status.
Jessica Barker offers us clear and simple pathways into the cyber security universe. Cyber Security covers the basics:
* Cyber security and the law
* Social engineering
* Technical vulnerabilities
* Types of cyber crime
* How businesses and individuals can boost cyber defenses
* Careers in cyber security
Chapter 9, "How individuals can better protect themselves" deals with the complex causes and vaccines to prevent consumers from getting hacked or just used. There are the usual warnings we have come to expect about passwords, in addition to some other new rules that we need to think about. Barker warns us that "Cyber criminals will always find new tactics to carry out their activities," but these are rooted in the same general techniques and strategies, including:
1. Protect your accounts with strong, unique passwords and 2FA
2. Be aware of card cloning, and don't let other people handle your cards, especially to take to a device that you cannot see.
3. Protect your devices by keeping them up to date and taking care with the apps you download.
4. Protect your data on public Wi-Fi by avoiding doing anything sensitive (such as online banking) and consider using a trusted VPN.
5. Be aware of the websites you use, particularly if you are buying something or inputting your personal or financial data.
6. Be social media savvy, with an awareness of the information you share and the fact that people are not always who they appear to be online
7. Its not just online that people are not always who they appear to be; social engineering crosses the digital, physical and social world and is used in all sorts of crimes.
"In cyber security," says Barker, "many problems are rooted in flawed design." As on-line software changes to paid commercial storage, for example, users may feel that their email capabilities are somewhat restricted in favor of commercially available (and profitable) Cloud storage. Its a consideration that guarantees software glitches.
For manufacturing professionals cyber security dangers can be extremely disruptive. Just as phone technology has grown to the point of 5 billion people owning mobile phones, half of which are smart phones, so does the industrial sector now have vulnerabilities in code and connected technologies. The implications for outages and shutdowns are huge because the networks that monitor and flag key manufacturing systems - gas, electricity, nuclear power, water - are all now vulnerable to data problems and security flaws. Barker quotes a study of 850 Industrial Control Systems and networks in which 89% used plain-text passwords, 40% had direct connections to the internet and 57 % had weak anti-virus protection.
Although this book can be used as a day-to-day cyber security primer, or a guide to thinking about starting a cyber job search, its real usefulness is in the way it brings a complex subject down to everyday level, the place where so many consumers get stunned by phishing and hacks. Anyone who uses an iphone now is open to data problems, and anyone who believes in the safety of passwords knows better. We can't be as smart as the guys who are out there setting up scams and diversions, but we can arm ourselves with the basic tools to slow them down.
Patricia E. Moody
FORTUNE magazine "Pioneering Woman in Mfg"
IndustryWeek IdeaXchange Xpert
A Mill Girl at Blue Heron Journal, on-line resource for business thought-leaders and decision-makers, patriciaemoody@gmail.com