Essays

GUEST ESSAY: Ponemon study warns: AI-enhanced deepfake attacks taking aim at senior execs

By Brian HIll

A new study by the Ponemon Institute points to a concerning use of AI: deepfake attacks are on the rise and are taking a financial and reputational toll on companies and their executives.

Related: Tools to fight deepfakes

Deepfake Deception: How AI Harms the Fortunes and Reputations of Executives and Corporations details the results of a recent independent Ponemon survey of 586 U.S. security professionals, highlighting a few worrisome findings:

•Deepfake risks increasingly target vulnerable board members and executives.

•Organizations suffer from a lack of visibility and preparedness to combat these attacks.

•The most common deepfakes are impersonation of executives’ trusted contacts, urgent demands for payments, and false information about a detected security breach.

•Deepfake is one of the most worrying uses of AI.

The unpleasant truth is that the use of AI-generated deepfake content to target executives in their personal lives is quickly escalating, creating a growing area of vulnerability for corporations. As AI technology advances, attackers are shifting their focus from technical exploits to human emotions using deeply personal and well-orchestrated social engineering tactics.

GUEST ESSAY: The case for making real-time business continuity a frontline cybersecurity priority

By Chao Cheng-Shorland

It starts with a ripple of confusion, then panic. Hospital systems freeze mid-procedure. Electronic medical records become inaccessible.

In the ICU, alarms blare as doctors and nurses scramble to stabilize critical patients without access to real-time data.

Admissions come to a standstill. Emergency rooms overflow with patients whose histories are locked away in an inaccessible system, while providers are unable to perform essential clinical tasks online in real time.

This is not a dystopian scenario; it is reality. Last year, when a major incident disrupted hospitals, airlines, and financial institutions worldwide, the consequences were immediate and devastating.

GUEST ESSAY: Four essential strategies to bolster cyber resilience in critical infrastructure

By Corey Hulen

In 2023, victims reported nearly 900,000 cybercrime complaints to the FBI. Altogether, losses eclipsed $12.5 billion — a significant 22% increase from the losses in 2022.

Related: Closing the resiliency gap

Unsurprisingly, experts predict this trend will continue to grow as we move further into the future.

While any business is a potential target for hackers, critical infrastructure organizations — including defense, healthcare, energy, utilities, and financial services companies — are perhaps most at risk due to their financial resources. According to the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security, attacks on critical infrastructure organizations increased 30% in 2023.

With cyberattacks becoming more frequent —and the associated impacts becoming increasingly difficult to absorb — it’s more important than ever for critical infrastructure organizations to invest in cyber resilience. As these organizations work to fortify their ability to prepare for, respond to, and recover from cyberattacks while maintaining critical operations, we recommend four key ingredients that can help them safeguard their operations against evolving cyber threats.

GUEST ESSAY: How AI co-pilots boost the risk of data leakage — making ‘least privilege’ a must

By Jim Alkove

The rise of AI co-pilots is exposing a critical security gap: sensitive data sprawl and excessive access permissions.

Until now, lackluster enterprise search capabilities kept many security risks in check—employees simply couldn’t find much of the data they were authorized to access.

But Microsoft Copilot changes the game, turbocharging enterprise search and surfacing sensitive information that organizations didn’t realize was exposed.

Many assume Copilot won’t share data externally and will respect existing user permissions, leading to a false sense of security. But the real problem isn’t whether Copilot stays within its lane—it’s that the lane is far too wide. If employees already have excessive access, Copilot simply makes that exposure more visible.

My Take: Will decentralizing connected systems redistribute wealth or reinforce Big Tech’s grip?

By Byron V. Acohido

For the past 25 years, I’ve watched the digital world evolve from the early days of the Internet to the behemoth it is today.

What started as a decentralized, open platform for innovation has slowly but surely been carved up, controlled, and monetized by a handful of tech giants.

Now, a new wave of technological development—edge computing, decentralized identity, and privacy-first networking—is promising to reverse that trend. Companies like Muchich-based semi-conductor manufacturer Infineon Technologies are embedding intelligence directly into sensors and controllers, giving devices the ability to process data locally instead of shipping everything off to centralized cloud servers.

Meanwhile, privacy-focused projects like Session and Veilid are pushing for decentralized communication networks that don’t rely on Big Tech.

GUEST ESSAY: President Biden’s cybersecurity executive order is an issue of national security

By Jonathan Gill

President Biden’s detailed executive order relating to cybersecurity is great to see.

Biden’s order reflects the importance of cybersecurity at the highest levels – it is an issue of national security and should be treated as such.

One of the big themes coming out of the order is the need to implement the right controls, and being able to provide evidence. Section two really underscores the need for secure software development.

If it is followed through, software publishers will need to open their kimonos to show they have the right controls in place and that these are working effectively.

It is also interesting to see in section seven that NIST will be issuing guidance on “minimum cybersecurity practices”, considering common cybersecurity practices and security controls.

GUEST ESSAY: The key role static code analyzers play in detecting coding errors, eliminating flaws

By Andrey Karpov

In the modern world of software development, code quality is becoming a critical factor that determines a project success. Errors in code can entail severe consequences.

For example, vulnerabilities in banking applications can lead to financial data leaks, and errors in medical systems can threaten the health of patients. Such incidents not only harm users but also undermine trust in technology in general, and pose reputational risks to companies. In the global economy where every mistake can cost millions, it is important to identify and fix problems early in the development process.

Code analysis is the process of detecting errors, flaws, and security defects in software. It can be performed manually or automatically. What manual analysis is concerned, we basically mean the classic code review method. Code review has the purpose of error search, working out recommendations on code improvement, and also contributes to education of new programmers.

Finding potential vulnerabilities is another important aspect of code analysis. Hackers can exploit some vulnerabilities to gain unauthorized access to data or systems. With the growing threat of cyber attacks, data security is becoming a priority for many companies. Therefore, regular code checks help protect information in advance and minimize risks.

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