How Cybersecurity-Literate are You?

Data centers are under constant attack. Hardly a day goes by without some kind of hack being uncovered. Intellectual property is stolen, cash ripped off from bank systems, websites brought down and millions of identities stolen.

The 2015 U.S. State of Cybercrime Survey found that 77 percent of organizations had detected a serious security event in the past 12 months, with 34 percent noting an increase in such events over the previous year.

“We’ve been at war here for almost 20 years, and many large companies are still in denial,” says William Kiss, CEO of Global 1 Research & Development, and speaker at the Data Center World Global conference later this month in Las Vegas. “And, small and medium-sized businesses still think they are not vulnerable to attack.”

Kiss hopes to bring awareness to the IT community when he holds a five-hour Cyber Security Seminar/Data Breach Boot Camp as part of Data Center World’s Premium Pass program on Monday, March 14.

Kiss will pull from his company’s nearly two decades of security and infrastructure protection to provide a comprehensive look at how to understand, protect against, and remediate a cyberattack on your business.

For example, do you know what a spear-phishing attack is, and how it can negatively impact your business? It’s in your best interest to know the answers if you already don’t.

Here’s the Cliff Note version: Not to be confused with phishing, spear-phishing often has a different motive to conventional phishing where scammers perform high-volume attacks generally looking for relatively low-value targets, such as credit card numbers that can be sold on the black market.

Spear-phishing is a way of exploring an organization to find credentials that open up access to a company. Targeting a small number of people working at a company can often yield a foothold into that company, perhaps via a compromised computer, or a compromised password, given out by an unwitting employee.

Once a foothold has been gained, it can be used to mount an advanced persistent threat (APT), which is modern-day lingo for an extended hacking campaign, designed to steal information from a potential target.

A few ways Kiss suggests for staying educated and protecting your company from cyberattacks is by requiring SOC-2 compliance from your information-processing vendors, forming a Cyber Security Awareness program, recommending that your management team join organizations such as INFRAGARD or DSAC; and having your cyber liability coverage examined by a risk management professional.

You do have insurance, right?

If much of the above information is foreign to you, this Cyber Security Seminar/Data Breach Boot Camp could save you and your company time, money … and face. This is just one of eight workshops you can participate in if you register for Data Center World’s Premium Pass day.

View descriptions for all of the workshops happening on March 14, then sign up for your Premium Pass.

Join William Kiss and 1,300 of your peers at Data Center World Global 2016, March 14-18, in Las Vegas, NV, for a real-world, “get it done” approach to converging efficiency, resiliency and agility for data center leadership in the digital enterprise. More details on the Data Center World website.

This first ran at http://www.afcom.com/news/cyber-security-literate/