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MY TAKE: Android users beware: Google says ‘potentially harmful apps’ on the rise

By Byron V. Acohido

Even if your company issues you a locked-down smartphone, embracing best security practices remains vital
Our smartphones. Where would we be without them?

Related Q&A: Diligence required of Android users

If you’re anything like me, making a phone call is the fifth or sixth reason to reach for your Android or iPhone. Whichever OS you favor, a good portion of the key components that make up your digital life — email, texting, social media, shopping, banking, hobbies, and work duties — now route through these indispensable contraptions much of the time.

Cybercriminals know this, of course, and for some time now they have been relentlessly seeking out and exploiting the fresh attack vectors spinning out of our smartphone obsession.

Don’t look now, but evidence is mounting that the mobile threats landscape is on the threshold of getting a lot more dicey.

This is because mobile services and smartphone functionalities are rapidly expanding, and, as you might expect, cyberattacks targeting mobile devices and services are also rising sharply. Here are a few key developments everyone should know about.

Malware deliveries

Upon reviewing Android usage data for all of 2018, Google identified a rise in the number of “potentially harmful apps” that were preinstalled or delivered through over-the-air updates. Threat actors have figured out how to insinuate themselves into the processes that preinstall apps on new phones and push out OS updates.

Why did they go there? Instead of having to trick users one by one, fraudsters only have to deceive the device manufacturer, or some other party involved in the supply chain, and thereby get their malicious code delivered far and wide.

In a related development, OneSpan, a Chicago-based supplier of authentication technology to 2,000 banks worldwide, reports seeing a rise in cyber attacks targeting mobile banking patrons. “Popular forms of mobile attacks, at this point in time, include screen scrapers and screen capture mechanisms, as well as the installation of rogue keyboards,” said OneSpan security evangelist Will LaSala. …more

Comment | Read | May 20th, 2019 | Imminent threats | My Take | Top Stories

MY TAKE: ‘Cyberthreat index’ shows SMBs recognize cyber risks — struggling to deal with them

By Byron V. Acohido

Small and midsize businesses — so-called SMBs — face an acute risk of sustaining a crippling cyberattack. This appears to be even more true today than it was when I began writing about business cyber risks at USA TODAY more than a decade ago.

Related: ‘Malvertising’ threat explained

However, one small positive step is that company decision makers today, at least, don’t have their heads in the sand. A recent survey of more than 1,000 senior execs and IT professionals, called the AppRiver Cyberthreat Index for Business Survey, showed a high level of awareness among SMB officials that a cyberattack represents a potentially devastating operational risk.

That said, it’s also clear that all too many SMBs remain ill equipped to assess evolving cyber threats, much less  effectively mitigate them. According to the Cyberthreat Index, 45 percent of all SMBs and 56% of large SMBs believe they are vulnerable to “imminent” threats of cybersecurity attacks.

Interestingly, 61 percent of all SMBs and 79 percent of large SMBs believe cyberhackers have more sophisticated technology at their disposal than the SMBs’ own cybersecurity resources.

“I often see a sizable gap between perceptions and reality among many SMB leaders,” Troy Gill a senior security analyst at AppRiver told me. “They don’t know what they don’t know, and this lack of preparedness often aids and abets cybercriminals.”

What’s distinctive about this index is that AppRiver plans to refresh it on a quarterly basis, going forward, thus sharing an instructive barometer showing how SMBs are faring against cyber exposures that will only continue to steadily evolve and intensify.

I had the chance at RSA 2019 to discuss the SMB security landscape at length with Gill. You can give a listen to the entire interview at this accompanying podcast. Here are key takeaways:

Sizable need

AppRiver is in the perfect position to deliver an SMB cyber risk index. The company got its start in 2002 in Gulf Breeze, Florida, as a two-man operation that set out to help small firms filter the early waves of email spam. It grew steadily into a supplier of cloud-enabled security and productivity services, and today has some 250 employees servicing 60,000 SMBs worldwide. …more

Comment | Read | May 2nd, 2019 | For technologists | Imminent threats | My Take | Podcasts | RSA Podcasts | Top Stories

MY TAKE: NIST Cybersecurity Framework has become a cornerstone for securing networks

By Byron V. Acohido

If your company is participating in the global supply chain, either as a first-party purchaser of goods and services from other organizations, or as a third-party supplier, sooner or later you’ll encounter the NIST Cybersecurity Framework.

Related: How NIST protocols fit SMBs

The essence of the NIST CSF is showing up in the privacy regulations now being enforced in Europe, as well as in a number of U.S. states. And the protocols it lays out inform a wide range of best-practices guides put out by trade groups and proprietary parties, as well.

I had the chance at RSA 2019 to visit with George Wrenn, founder and CEO of CyberSaint Security, a cybersecurity software firm  that plays directly in this space.

Prior to launching CyberSaint, Wrenn was CSO of Schneider Electric, a supplier of technologies used in industrial control systems. While at Schneider, Wrenn participated with other volunteer professionals in helping formulate the NIST CSF.

The participation led to the idea behind CyberSaint. The company supplies a platform, called CyberStrong, that automatically manages risk and compliance assessments across many types of frameworks. This includes not just the NIST CSF, but also the newly minted NIST Risk Management Framework 2.0, and the upcoming NIST Privacy Framework. For a full drill down on the wider context, give a listen to the accompanying podcast. Here are key takeaways:

Collective wisdom

Think of NIST as Uncle Sam’s long-established standards-setting body. “They are the people who brought you 36 inches in a yard,” Wrenn observed. To come up with its cybersecurity framework, NIST assembled top experts and orchestrated a global consensus- building process that resulted in a robust set of protocols. The CSF is comprehensive and flexible; it can be tailored to fit a specific organization’s needs. And the best part is it’s available for free. …more

Comment | Read | April 30th, 2019 | Best Practices | For technologists | My Take | Podcasts | Privacy | RSA Podcasts | Steps forward | Top Stories

MY TAKE: How digital technology and the rising gig economy are exacerbating third-party risks

By Byron V. Acohido

Accounting for third-party risks is now mandated by regulations — with teeth.

Related: Free ‘VRMM’ tool measures third-party exposure

Just take a look at Europe’s GDPR, NYDFS’s cybersecurity requirements or even California’s newly minted Consumer Privacy Act.

What does this mean for company decision makers, going forward, especially as digital transformation and expansion of the gig economy deepens their reliance on subcontractors?

I had the chance at RSA 2019 to discuss that question with Catherine Allen, chairman and CEO of the Santa Fe Group, and Mike Jordan, senior director of Santa Fe’s Shared Assessments program.

Allen is a widely respected thought leader on this topic, having launched Shared Assessments in 2005 as an intel-sharing and training consortium focused on third-party risks. And Jordan has had a hands-on role working third-party risk issues for more than a decade.

To hear the full interview, please give the accompanying podcast a listen. Here are a few key takeaways.

Addressing third-parties

Allen founded The Santa Fe Group in 1995 and established it as a leading consultancy, specializing on emerging technologies. With subcontractors playing a rising role and third party risk covering so many complex fields of expertise, six big banks and the Big Four accounting/consulting firms tasked her with coming up with a standardized approach for assessing third party vendor risk.

What emerged was a quasi-trade association – Shared Assessments. The founding participants developed assessment regimes and tools, all having to do with measuring and assessing, essentially, third-party risks. It was a natural step to expand and evolve these protocols and tools, and to invite companies from other sectors to participate. Collaborating in advance on what’s important in third party risk lets organizations and their vendors come to a faster agreement on what to do about those risks. That out of the way, business can proceed with less risk. …more

Comment | Read | April 24th, 2019 | Best Practices | For technologists | My Take | Podcasts | RSA Podcasts | Steps forward | Top Stories

MY TAKE: Most companies blissfully ignorant of rising attacks on most-used endpoint: mobile devices

By Byron V. Acohido

A dozen years after Apple launched the first iPhone, igniting the smartphone market, the Bring Your Own Device to work phenomenon is alive and well.

Related: Stopping mobile device exploits.

The security issues posed by BYOD are as complex and difficult to address as ever. Meanwhile, the pressure for companies to proactively address mobile security is mounting from two quarters.

On one hand, regulators are ahead of the curve on this one; they’ve begun mandating that companies  account for data losses, including breaches in which mobile devices come into play. And on the other hand, cyber criminals are hustling to take full advantage of the corporate world’s comparatively slow response to a fast-rising threat.

Metrics are piling up showing just how pervasive mobile threats have become. Some  33 percent of companies participating in Verizon’s Mobile Security Index 2019 survey admitted to having suffered a compromise involving a mobile device —  and the majority of those affected said that the impact was major.

Verizon’s poll also found that 67 percent of organizations were less confident of the security of mobile devices, as compared to other IT assets. And all of this is unfolding as employees continue to increasingly use both company-issued phones, and their personally-owned devices, to access sensitive data and conduct business.

“The reality is users don’t care whether it’s a corporate-owned device or a BYOD, and neither do the attackers” said J.T. Keating, vice president of product strategy at Zimperium, a Dallas, TX-based supplier of mobile security systems. “Our phones are completely blended, in terms of access to corporate data and personal data.”

I had a lively discussion with Keating at RSA 2019. For a drill down on the full interview, give a listen to the accompanying podcast. Here are a few key takeaways.

Endpoint is an endpoint

That queasy feeling senior execs have about the murkiness of mobile security is well founded, based on the results of a simple experiment Zimperium conducted …more

Comment | Read | April 18th, 2019 | For consumers | For technologists | My Take | Podcasts | RSA Podcasts | Top Stories

MY TAKE: Account hijackers follow small banks, credit unions over to mobile banking apps

By Byron V. Acohido

As long as cyber attacks continue, financial institutions will remain a prime target, for obvious reasons.

Related: OneSpan’s rebranding launch

Outside of giants JP Morgan, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and U.S. Bancorp, the remainder of the more than 10,000 U.S. firms are comprised of community banks and regional credit unions.

These smaller institutions, much like the giants, are hustling to expand mobile banking services. Yet, they are much less well equipped to detect and repel cyber attackers, who are relentlessly seeking out and exploiting the fresh attack vectors spinning out of expansion of mobile banking.

I had the chance at RSA 2019 to discuss this war of attrition with Will LaSala, director of security services and security evangelist at OneSpan, a Chicago-based provider of anti-fraud, e-signature and digital identity solutions to 2,000 banks worldwide. The good news is that OneSpan and other security vendors are innovating to bring machine learning, data analytics and artificial intelligence to the front lines. For a drill down on our conversation, give a listen to the accompanying podcast. Key takeaways:

Shifting risks

We’ve seen a shift in bank fraud, especially for small banks and credit unions, over the past couple of years. In the not-so-distant past, banks dealt with online and account takeover fraud, where hackers stole passwords and used phishing scams to target specific individuals.

Now this fraud has moved into the mobile space because nearly every financial institution now has an app, changing the fraud landscape. Organizations like OneSpan now analyze bank fraud through the mobile app landscape through areas like social engineering attacks, screen captures, or changing SIM cards, LaSala told me. …more

Comment | Read | April 10th, 2019 | For consumers | For technologists | Imminent threats | My Take | RSA Podcasts | Top Stories

MY TAKE: What ‘fake news’ really is: digital disinformation intended to disrupt, manipulate

By Byron V. Acohido

President Trump’s constant mislabeling of mainstream news reports he doesn’t appreciate as “fake news” has done much to muddle the accurate definition of this profound global force – and obscure the societal damage this rising phenomenon is precipitating.

Related: The scourge of ‘malvertising’

Fake news is the willful spreading of disinformation. Yes, much of political propaganda, as practiced down through the ages, fits that definition. But what’s different, as we approach the close of the second decade of the 21st century, is that it is now possible to pull the trigger on highly-targeted, globally-distributed disinformation campaigns – by leveraging behavior profiling tools and social media platforms.

Like seemingly everything else these days, this is a complex issue, and it takes effort to decipher the bottom line. Here are three things it is vital for every concerned citizen to grasp about disinformation campaigns in the digital age.

Fake news is scaling.

There are plenty of factual articles  about how “fake news” influenced the 2016 U.S. presidential election. What many citizens still don’t realize is that this was just one of the major elections jarred by this potent variant of disinformation spreading. This includes England’s Brexit vote and very recent cases in Brazil and India, where disinformation campaigns fueled some tragic outcomes.

In the 2016 US elections, Russia targeted Facebook users to receive incendiary ads and bogus stories, and used botnets to facilitate intelligence gathering and distribution. And human  “supersharers” – mostly Republican women older than the average Twitter user – got into the act, as well, Tweeting stories from ideological websites at a furious daily pace, according to a study by Northeastern University in Boston.

Meanwhile, in January 2016, during the heat of the presidential contest, some 39 percent Trump’s Twitter followers were faked.  A tally by Twitter Audit showed Candidate Trump with 22.7 million Twitter followers – 16.6 million real, and 6.1 million fabricated.

Fast forward to Brazil’s presidential election last October. WhatsApp was flooded with fake news about both of the leading candidates. And in India’s national elections, which are underway right now, disinformation has stoked emotions tied to India’s conflict with Pakistan over Kashmir. …more

Comment | Read | April 8th, 2019 | For consumers | For technologists | My Take | Top Stories

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