While 2020 will be remembered for the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, 2021 may be remembered as the year when ransomware entered the collective public consciousness, courtesy of the Colonial Pipeline and JBS ransomware attacks.

The cybersecurity professional labor shortage is no secret and has only been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. For many enterprises, hiring processes slowed or stopped altogether; even those which were able to resume normal recruitment efforts were met with a cyberskills gap.

The global privacy landscape has changed drastically since the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) became law in 2018.

Risk management is an important function in any organization. Financial services organizations often employ the three lines of defense approach to manage risk within the organization.

It is a common perception that marketing is generally at odds with security and privacy. Although these are broad generalizations with plenty of excluded nuances and exceptions, marketing is seen as thriving on data—the more, the better.

The rise of ransomware has inspired the creation of myriad techniques attackers can use to achieve their goals. At its core, ransomware encrypts an enterprise’s data and then sells the key needed to decrypt them.

Countries are increasingly adopting new technologies across various business spheres, and Pakistan is no exception.

The US military developed the operational security (OPSEC) methodology during the Vietnam War. Military service afforded me unique opportunities and insights obtained throughout assignments that spanned across the intelligence community and multiple areas of warfare.

2021 brought many surprises, not the least of which was an uptick in the scale and severity of cyberattacks. One might be tempted to call 2021 the year of ransomware, yet ransomware is not merely automated worms anymore.

Over the last year, organizations have had to address many new challenges. When the COVID-19 pandemic first hit, many enterprises had to send staff home with workstations, printers and other resources they needed to continue working.

It seems as though ransomware is constantly being discussed on the news. It also seems there have been more news stories about ransomware in the past few months than in the past few years.

Cyberthreats and cyberattacks are inevitable. Cyberrisk, which formerly was considered relevant only to cybersecurity professionals, is now recognized as having the potential to threaten an entire organization.

The current privacy discourse is shaped around the question: “Is your organization compliant with privacy regulations such as the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the US State of California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) or the US Health Insurance Portability...

The achievement of higher levels of the US Department of Defense (DoD)’s Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC), specifically Maturity Levels 4 and 5, enhances an organization’s ability to protect Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) and reduces the risk of advanced persistent threats (APTs).

Artificial intelligence (AI) is seemingly everywhere, with events such as the COVID-19 pandemic spurring increased investment in AI as organizations accelerate plans to power an increasingly digitally connected workforce.

ISACA® recently published State of Cybersecurity 2021, Part 2: Threat Landscape, Security and Cybersecurity Maturity, the second part of its annual cybersecurity report. Now in its seventh year, the report enables ISACA to poll its target audience and report the survey findings.

Data protection officers (DPOs) are facing increasing difficulties when performing tasks manually to comply with data privacy regulations. Gathering information about personal data processing activities in a large enterprise can take several months.

Data privacy is increasingly top-of-mind for today’s executives. The 24th Annual Global CEO Survey—US Findings found that chief information security officers (CEOs) ranked cybersecurity and data privacy second among 11 areas of impact and value, which is why many organizations are putting financial resources behind privacy initiatives.

Effective risk governance means organizations are making data-driven decisions with the best information available at the moment.

Assuring that third parties with access to systems and/or information do not pose a risk to business is a major pain for most organizations, but there are ways to assess the level of cybersecurity that a vendor provides.

Part of what makes a cyberjob appealing is that you get to invent, build the “killer application (app)” or make a new breakthrough. That is the appeal for many brilliant creative types, but the reality is that the cybersecurity realm does not allow much leeway for creativity.

In 2020, China launched a global data security initiative focused on strengthening international coordination for cross-border data flow and outlining the principle of personal information protection.

There are many privacy concerns impacting humanity across the globe—one of which is advertising technology (ad tech).

Today, information and technology (I&T) can have tremendous influence on whether an organization succeeds or fails.

There are many concerns associated with the modern cybersecurity community. Robust firewalls, reliable cloud storage solutions, in-house IT support and antivirus bundles are all examples. Still, the role of data destruction should never be taken for granted.

Effectively addressing the challenges posed by the COVID-19 crisis requires not just a management system but a governance system that is designed with a primary focus on stakeholder needs and continually serving customers.

Advanced persistent threats (APTs) are introduced by adversaries that possess sophisticated levels of expertise and significant resources, which allow them to achieve their objectives by using multiple attack vectors (e.g., cyberattacks, physical attacks, deception).

As more privacy regulations are released, organizations must evaluate their privacy capabilities. However, it is difficult to know where to start. The first thing organizations need to do to make sure they are being responsible is to determine what data they possess.

In an era of hyperconnectivity, cybercriminals are constantly innovating their tactics to exploit human error and technological vulnerabilities. Adapting to the changing threat landscape is essential for any organization to remain secure in the digital age.

Advanced persistent threats (APTs) require that organizations respond with active and credible cyberdefenses. This is the focus of Maturity Level 5 of the US Department of Defense (DoD) cybersecurity standard, the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC). Maturity Level 5 focuses on the protection of Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) and is the highest level of cybersecurity defined in the CMMC standard.

Transforming business frontiers have created an expanding digital universe and explosive data growth, requiring organizations to act as reservoirs and graveyards of data. With the amount of data that exists doubling every 2 years...

An effective and mature risk governance program drives better decision making in all directions of an organization: up to leadership and the board, down to individual contributors and laterally to all lines of business.

We are all part of a giant and interwoven supply chain. Cybersecurity failure within the supply chain is a collective problem that has always existed, but its severity has been brought to light once more due to recent events.

In baseball, the “sweet spot” refers to the precise location on a bat where the maximum amount of energy from a batter’s swing is shifted into the ball.

Auditing IT governance in the navigation sector is a challenge. The number of interdependencies and stakeholders in new navigation systems makes the process truly complex, and the increasing trend in subcontracting large parts of a system hides some of those interdependencies and other details in a huge number of contracts and other legal documentation.

The amount of data collected across enterprises has exponentially increased over the years—and it continues to grow.

Just when you thought 2020 was bad enough, 2021 ushered in its own chaos. The events that transpired in the United States during the first weeks of the new year were highly emotional, wrought with anxiety and, in many ways, an embarrassment to every US citizen who wakes up each day just trying to do and be better than the day before.

Truth. Fact—a statement in accordance with reality. For years, there has been an assault on truth, whether through the promotion of “alternative facts,” the normalization of seemingly insignificant lies, the sharing of half-truths that mischaracterize reality or the confounding of fact and opinion.

It is essential for IT experts and practitioners to be aware of and understand privacy laws as there are increasing global cybersecurity incidents.

The US Department of Defense (DoD) cybersecurity standard, the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC), establishes 5 maturity levels.

On 8 December 2020, the chairman of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) laid out areas that the authorities will be looking at closely in the fintech industry.

Acquiring new clients using a digital channel such as a mobile application rather than requiring a physical presence is a process referred to as digital onboarding.

Enterprises are established with set objectives of meeting stakeholders’ needs and serving customers with desired products or services that add value. To be able to continually meet these objectives, an appropriate risk management strategy with a...

Organizations that collect business-to-business (B2B) data from residents of the US State of California got a reprieve in 2019. The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) went into effect in January 2020, applying to the collection of business-to-consumer (B2C) data.

On 6 December 2020, the Craft Industry Alliance reported that the McCall printing facility in Manhattan, Kansas, USA, had been shut down since October 2020 due to what appeared to be a malware attack.

Today’s complex cyberthreat landscape is a risk to all enterprises. Combating these threats requires an enhanced, coordinated and sustained national effort across industry and government. A determined, well-resourced adversary can penetrate any network.

In the cybersecurity realm, it has long been discussed and understood that people are considered the weakest link in cybersecurity. And, like security, everyone has a crucial role to play to ensure a reasonable degree of privacy, to keep personal data safe.

Despite cybercrime cost amounting to more than US$1 trillion globally in 2020—more than 1% of the global domestic product (GDP)—the topic still does not receive sufficient attention at the board and C-suite levels in organizations, according to a report conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and McAfee.

The Canadian Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) is a comprehensive act that governs collecting, using and disclosing personal information. Initially, the act was a mechanism proposed to ensure trust in e-commerce...

2023 compliance readiness starts now. The US State of California’s Proposition 24, known as the California Privacy Rights Act of 2020 (CPRA), was passed by voters in the November 2020 election. The CPRA provides additional rights to consumers and places...

I have had the privilege of working with organizations that adopted cloud strategies and were able to improve productivity for end users and optimize IT operations and cybersecurity. I have also worked with organizations that stepped into the cloud world...

Enterprises’ operational functions often need their data on a real-time basis to know about business performance and have an overall assessment of their strategic and tactical goals. Simultaneously, the risk management function wants to define analytical models ...

As the world considers what 5G will mean for privacy, low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite Internet continues to gain momentum and quietly fly under the radar from a privacy perspective.