Author: Lou Covey

Digital Operational Resilience Act

EU’s DORA: Who will stand up for protection?

Lou Covey

The EU's Digital Operational Resiliency Act (DORA) went live in January. This legislation's goals seem to conflict with the US administration’s willingness to ignore technology security standards. The question is: Who will stand up to protect corporate and consumer data?

DORA is highly targeted at the stability and resilience of the financial services sector. It ensures financial institutions can respond to, withstand, and recover from ICT-related threats and disruptions. It also requires robust strategies and policies to manage ICT risks in financial institutions.
Arnaud Treps, chief information security officer at Odaseva, said, “DORA is very different from previous regulation where you have to change where you operate. DORA is about having proper backups, the capability to restore quickly, and building redundancy.”

Europe takes the lead

But does the US rejecting data privacy regulation mean walling America off from the rest of the world? Meta has threatened to potentially limit

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Teenagers, representing representatives of DOGE, oversee and government worker on a desktop computer.

The case for insider-threat detection

Lou Covey

An independent threat intelligence team warned the Treasury Department that representatives of the Department of Government Efficiency was by an independent threat intelligence were a significant “insider threat.” The warning made the problem of insider threats a new worry for US citizens, sparking multiple discussions on social media. It also made a new case for technology that defended against the threat.

Insider threats are not the most common form security weakness, but they are the hardest to defend against. Even if a company is successful in screening out potential bad actors in the hiring process, then they have to. make sure who they hired is who shows up to get their security badge. And if they get past those two processes, there’s always the possibility of an unbalanced or angry employee bringing a firearm into the office to commit mayhem. Luckily there are technologies in place, such as advanced detection and response, identification validation and AI driven weapons detection available in the market.

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English riots cause unprecedent damage

How social media moderation works

Lou Covey

There has been a lot of debate regarding the imposition of moderation on social media and whether that constitutes censorship and violations of the right to free speech. That argument is specious at best. Offending content on commercial social media is removed only when it negates profitability.

Most humans moderate their speech. Sometimes we think about impulsively speaking in reaction to something that incites strong emotions. People who do not react have what is called, “self-control”. Some people don’t have that filter (I’m looking at you, Elon) and blurt out offensive, nonfactual, or dishonest responses. Sometimes they aren’t atypical, they are just selfish people without manners (still looking at you Elon). Moderation of your speech is just a civilized attitude.

Profit motive

When it comes to social media, however, especially for-profit social media, the primary factor is profit. That has been the guiding principle of all social media moderation.

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James Bore talks about cybersecurity marketing

Security industry addicted to bland marketing

Lou Covey

There is no question that the cybersecurity industry performs a vital role in keeping the digital world safe.  It’s too bad the industry is so dedicated to bland, repetitive and un-informational marketing and research.

The problem doesn’t exist with cybersecurity alone.  Every tech industry under finances and plagiarizes marketing communications both within and without their niches, but the problem in security is that there is so little actual data to refer to, it is easy to make it up and still be believed.  The introduction of AI into marketing efforts definitely cuts down the price and effort of communications, but it makes the bland and repetitive content even more bland, repetitive while making it less informative than when humans are actually involved.

Anyone involved in the process of evaluating this content and mining nuggets of relevant truth knows the problem and some are trying to do something about it.  James Bore is one of them.

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Editorial: Jog on, Meta

Lou Covey

Mark Zuckerberg made two announcements about major changes in Meta in the past two weeks. The first was the revelation that they would be creating hundreds of AI-driven bots to interact with users. The second was the announcement that they would stop moderation of content, “except for dangerous stuff,” according to a video posted by Zuckerberg. With a certain amount of schadenfreude, we note that Meta had to pull the accounts they had already made as users started engaging with them, finding their inherent flaws and raking them over the coals for how piss-poor their execution was.

Both of these announcements validated a decision I had made earlier this year to start divesting myself of Meta platform accounts. I made the request to deactivate all the accounts (Facebook, Instagram and Messenger) a week before both announcements. I would have done it sooner if I had known it would take Meta 30 days from my request to deactivate everything. This morning, however, I received a text from my partners in Cyber Protection Magazine asking if I thought we should deactivate our Facebook account.

Frankly, I had forgotten we had one, basically because we received zero engagement from the platform, despite the amount of content we put up there. That,.too, is a result of Meta de-emphasizing legacy media. Of course, I concurred with the team. Sometime in February, we will disappear from Facebook.

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Ian Thornton-Trump

A new year and new problems

Lou Covey

We open a new year and a new season with our friend, Ian Thornton-Trump, chief information security officer at the MSSP Inversion6 and in 30 minutes we take on some pretty meaty subjects.
First, we discuss how China strategically infiltrated technology systems in the US and other countries as a geopolitical message rather than attacks. He discusses the challenges of securing complex, interconnected systems and the need for proactive defense.
Next we review the rise of corporate power and influence and how the increasing wealth and influence of individuals like Elon Musk is disrupting the traditional balance of power in democracies. The ethical concerns around wealthy individuals wielding disproportionate political influence could result in something the oligarchs are not expecting.
Finally, we review potential trade wars and the possibility of Canada and Mexico joining the BRICS alliance.
2025 is going to be bumpy but very interesting.

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Lots of Questions for 2025

Lou Covey

As we start wrapping up the year we are in planning mode, and we have questions… lots of questions. We will be asking them next year. Here are some of the things we are concerned about.

Statistics — We hear how bad the situation is in security. Lots of jobs going unfilled. Cyber attacks on the increase. The cost of cybercrime approaching $25 trillion dollars. But is it that bad?

AI-Driven Cyber Attacks — As artificial intelligence advances, cybercriminals are expected to use it to craft highly sophisticated phishing scams, automate attacks, and develop malware that can rapidly evolve. Defenders will need AI-powered tools to detect and mitigate these threats in real time. Which way will….

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Santa Burglar

Online platforms negate tools for shoppers

Lou Covey

It’s officially the Christmas holiday shopping season and scammers are happily draining online shoppers gift budgets with wild abandon. The FBI warned consumers last week that holiday-related fraud is growing. E-commerce sales should exceed $260 billion this year and even if scammers maintain the same activity as 2023, they should come away with a cool $10 billion. No matter what the cybersecurity industry comes up with in the form of protections for consumers it is negated by retail platforms like Amazon, Google and Temu.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), identifies individuals aged 18 to 39 are 25% more likely to fall victim to online shopping scams than older adults. These shoppers rely heavily on e-commerce platforms and social media ads that are scams disguised as unbelievable holiday deals.

Cutting back

One might think that online retailers are ramping up systems to curb that kind of abuse. You would be very wrong. According to recent reports, retailers are growing security spending by 8% in 2024, compared to rates of rates of 16% and 17% seen in 2021 and 2022 respectively. In some cases, retailers are cutting security budgets.

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AI making life hard for consumers and cybersecurity

Lou Covey

The AI industry supposedly to make life easier for humanity. Since it first burst onto the scene it has, arguably, made life more difficult. Consumers and the cybersecurity industry, in particular, are struggling professionally, emotionally, and mentally to understand the value, if not the efficacy, of the technology.

Cyber Protection Magazine evaluated three surveys, from Armorcode, Arkose Labs, and Appdome, over the past few weeks. They agreed the public image of AI is untrustworthy, full of false promises, and something to be feared. In spite of this image, customers believe they must adopt and adapt to the technology, even if they don’t want to.

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