{"id":46218,"date":"2020-03-16T09:06:57","date_gmt":"2020-03-16T09:06:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/?p=46218"},"modified":"2020-03-18T09:37:15","modified_gmt":"2020-03-18T09:37:15","slug":"what-the-coronavirus-outbreak-can-teach-us-about-cybersecurity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/2020\/03\/16\/what-the-coronavirus-outbreak-can-teach-us-about-cybersecurity\/","title":{"rendered":"What the coronavirus outbreak can teach us about cybersecurity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

With cases of the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) emerging globally Brian Pinnock, Cybersecurity Specialist at Mimecast, tells us what the outbreak can teach us about cybersecurity. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The World Health Organisation and governments around the world are grappling with the Coronavirus (now named Covid-19<\/a>) that has, as of mid-March, infected more than 170,000 people in 157 countries<\/a>. Predictions are that it could cause in excess of US$1 trillion of economic damage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2017\nthe NotPetya virus<\/a> became a global cyber-pandemic that\nspread around the world in a few short hours, paralysing organisations,\ncrippling shipping ports and shutting down government agencies globally. It\ncaused over $10Bn<\/a> in damages. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One reason\nfor the seismic disruptions caused by both medical and cyber pathogens is the\ninterconnectedness of the global economy. Supply chains now span multiple\ncontinents. Air travel passenger volumes have doubled. Disruption in China is\nleading to disruption everywhere. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarly,\ndigital supply chains span continents and cloud computing has become ubiquitous,\nleading to a digital interconnected web which is fragile and can be easily\nbroken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The coronavirus\nhas brought into stark relief some elements of basic human nature that come\ninto play in both a health crisis and a cybersecurity incident. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A deeper\nlook shows striking similarities between the human responses to the coronavirus\noutbreak and cybersecurity incidents. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Risky\nbehaviour exposes everyone<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reports\nsuggest that the coronavirus originated from animals<\/a> such as bats, pangolins or civets. Cross\nspecies transfer possibly occurred in a market in Wuhan. Researchers found<\/a> that the tolerated risky behaviour of\nconsuming exotic animal parts triggered a single introduction into humans,\nwhich was followed by human-to-human spread. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarly,\nemployees engaging in tolerated risky behaviour, such as visiting adult or Dark\nWeb sites or downloading files from non-work-related portals, can let malware into\nthe organisation that spreads from one user to another. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transparency\nis critical<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Too often,\nkeeping silent exacerbates the situation and puts business communities at risk.\nChina has received some backlash, with reports emerging that the Chinese government\nat first played down the risk of outbreak and later the extent of the problem.\nTransparency is a major contributor to effectively managing the potential\nfallout from a viral disease. Even today, we are unsure of the extent of the\ncoronavirus outbreak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarly,\nby the time senior management are made aware of a serious cyber incident, the\ninfection has usually been incubating and spreading in an organisation for weeks or sometimes months<\/a>. The organisation can become the source\nof further infection via their own email systems. Coverups mostly don\u2019t work<\/a> and hide the extent of the problem to the\nwider community which leads to misinformed complacency about risks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many organisations\ndon\u2019t share threat intelligence effectively or at all. Cybercriminals therefore\nemploy the same attack method repeatedly against multiple organisations because\nit keeps working. We enable criminals by staying silent and ineffectually sharing\nthe symptoms and preventative measures of the cyber disease. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The importance\nof basic (security) hygiene<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Demand for face masks<\/a> is surging. But face masks aren’t as\neffective as most people think. Unfortunately, people are drawn to visible\ncontrols rather than invisible ones. But medical authorities<\/a> suggest that basic practices, like regular\nhandwashing, are more effective at preventing the spread of the virus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nequivalent in cybersecurity is focusing on basic controls first. Have effective\nand regular patch management practices, implement controls to detect and\nprevent the spread of malware, adopt regular employee awareness training to\nequip people with the appropriate knowledge to avoid risky behaviour. It is\nmostly invisible, but it is a critical layer in the defence against cybercrime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Herd immunity\nand misinformed complacency<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Organisations\nwho can\u2019t or won\u2019t patch and protect their systems or train their people are\nthe equivalent of the those who won\u2019t or can\u2019t vaccinate their families. An\nexpectation of herd immunity<\/a> is often misplaced both when it comes to human health<\/a> and for cybersecurity<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the UK\nan auditor general report<\/a> on NHS disruptions<\/a> caused by the WannaCry virus, showed they\nall had unpatched or unsupported operating systems. In addition, other security\ncontrols would have prevented the rapid spread and subsequent deaths and fiscal\ncosts. But they were incorrectly configured which allowed the virus to spread.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We can\nnever prevent all infections and we can never anticipate every eventuality. Diseases\nwill continue to jump the species barrier and zero-day malware will continue to\nappear. What we can do however is become more transparent, be more community\nfocused and make ourselves more resilient. If not, we remain exposed to a \u2018Disease-X\u2019\n– either in the medical or cyber domains – with no known treatments or vaccines\nand at the risk of devastating economic and human losses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With cases of the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) emerging globally Brian Pinnock, Cybersecurity Specialist at Mimecast, tells us what the outbreak can teach us about cybersecurity. The World Health Organisation and governments around the world are grappling with the Coronavirus (now named Covid-19) that has, as of mid-March, infected more than 170,000 people in 157 countries. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":46219,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,36,4115,3629,13,79],"tags":[4555,11246,11474,3106,1530,2756],"class_list":["post-46218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-enterprise-security","category-intelligent-technology","category-intelligent-technology-newsletter","category-newsletter","category-top-stories","category-used","tag-brian-pinnock","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid","tag-cybercriminals","tag-cybersecurity","tag-mimecast"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46218"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46272,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46218\/revisions\/46272"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}