"These incidents involve the intentional use of deceptive or illegal practices to fraudulently obtain money, assets, or information from individuals or institutions, and include actions carried out over cyber channels."
What if I told you that everything you know and everything you do to ensure quality backups is no longer viable? In fact, what if I told you that in an era of generative AI, when it comes to backups, we're all pretty much screwed?
I've always had what I would consider a hacker mindset, a curiosity to take things apart, understand them, and use that knowledge to solve problems. That mindset took me on a circuitous route into the cybersecurity industry; after being kicked out of high school for hacking computer systems, I worked a range of jobs, managing office supply companies by day and cracking Wi-Fi networks by night until I started a Digital Forensics degree which led me to the world of security research.
"World Cloud Security Day is a useful reminder to recognize how much cloud risk now comes down to everyday access decisions and overlooked misconfigurations," says James Maude, Field CTO at BeyondTrust.
When civilian banks, logistics platforms, and payment processors share physical data center infrastructure with military AI systems, those facilities become legitimate military targets under international humanitarian law - and the civilian services housed inside lose their legal protection.
Building security into the framework of an organization prevents security from being seen as a barrier to daily activities. If an employee feels as if a security measure is inhibiting them from completing their daily tasks, they're far more likely to find a way around that measure. This can range from propping open a door to using the same easy-to-remember password for every account.
Near-identical password reuse occurs when users make small, predictable changes to an existing password rather than creating a completely new one. While these changes satisfy formal password rules, they do little to reduce real-world exposure. Here are some classic examples: Adding or changing a number Summer2023! → Summer2024! Appending a character Swapping symbols or capitalization Welcome! → Welcome? AdminPass → adminpass Another common scenario occurs when organizations issue a standard starter password to new employees, and instead of replacing it entirely, users make incremental changes over time to remain compliant.