Dear Reader, 

This month’s newsletter coincides with the publishing of of second special issue of the year, dedicated to the subject of Cyber Insurance.  As much as people hate to have to buy insurance, it has become an integral part of security for businesses large and small.  After a significant bump in the road, just prior to the pandemic, more companies are jumping into the fray, not the least including our primary sponsor this year, Safety National Insurance.  What makes insurance more valuable in security is how the companies mandate basic cyber hygiene and bring appropriate technology to protecting data assets.

 This year, however, to get that special issue, you are going to have to have a subscription.  That’s available for just $24.99 a year, or:

• Be a sponsor
• Be customers of our sponsor
• Get a code from the PR reps who have acquired discounts
• Be one of those sources that don’t just bury us in press releases or self serving marketing. They get special attention.

Lou Covey, Joe Basques and Patrick Boch

Our Cyber Insurance Issue

As mentioned above, our latest issue is here, and it's about an interesting, yet difficult topic: cyber insurance.

It seems like a good idea, but high payouts have led to high premiums, up to a point where it doesn't make sense to be insured at all. On the other hand, the mandates which are now being put into place by cyber insurance companies help the overall security posture get better - or do they?

World Backup Day 2024

 It's World Backup Day and we're not limiting ourselves to one or two articles about that special occasion. This year, we're looking at backups in three articles, focusing on whether backups are still relevant in a cloud-centric world. And for those of you who are after buzzwords: AI gets a mentioning, too!

RSA Conference 2024

 The RSA Conference is a little more than a month away and our chef editor, Lou Covey, has already filled his dance card with meetings.  But he is limiting those meetings to a single day which means he won’t be taking between 50 and 70 meeting like the last two years and missing everything else at the conference.

 The doesn’t mean he won’t talk to you before or after the conference. He is still taking meetings (two a week) before the conference and (two a week) for three weeks after the conference.  On the following subjects:

• Counteroffensive technology
• Security intelligence
• Quantum encryption
• Election security
• Zero Trust methodology
• Honest marketing
• Security for the non-technical
• Security on $100 a month

 Those are the headings of the kind of content we want to cover going forward.  It’s not an exclusive list but it will mean you have a better shot of getting in.

Election Security and AI

Our next special issue will focus on the democratic process and how it can be secured. The good news is that wherever we look, noting technology is pretty much locked down.  What isn’t so safe is humanity. Even as adversaries of Western democracies gear up for election interference around the world, they know that the cheapest and most effective method for damaging those countries rests in convincing those citizens that lies are truth.

 Technologically, that’s where AI is going to play a big part on both sides. Adversarial use of AI has already popped up in the US elections.

 The Chinese government has already breached the UK election commission's electoral registrations, email and control systems. The data potentially accessed included UK citizens' full names, email addresses, home addresses and phone numbers. Nor is the commission the only target in the British political system.  With that kind of information they can target voters with AI generated disinformation.  It is not hard to believe every Western country has had similar breaches.

 Trade show partnerships

 We are a media partner with the Cloud Expo in Germany again this year and are adding the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council to our list of conferences we promote.  And there will be a special issue on Payment Card Security in the fall.  Keep that in mind.