Lack of knowledge will hamper anyone’s cyber security efforts

This equally applies to individuals, large and small organisations and government departments.

The threat actors best friend, is when we all compartmentalise our cyber security issues, dealing with them quietly and behind closed doors – this includes trying to pay the cyber criminals off! This gives them the opportunity to keep using the same attacks over and over again.

There is an excellent piece in The Record, by Jonathan Greig, examining just what that lack of knowledge does to our ability to defend against ransomware attacks:

The severe lack of ransomware incident reporting in the U.S. is hampering efforts by the government to not only protect organizations and businesses but also take retaliatory measures against the gangs launching attacks…

Eric Goldstein, executive assistant director for cybersecurity at CISA

CISA exec: Lack of ransomware incident reporting is crippling defense efforts – The Record by Recorded Future

The article is aimed at looking at the US laws that will make organisations report cybersecurity incidents to the authorities, but what you can learn from this is that knowledge is key when it comes to your cyber security defences.

We can help with that knowledge.

The simplest way is for you to check my blog, daily, so you are up to date with the threat landscape – you are already here.

Over at Octagon, I wrote a post describing how you can add my news feed to Outlook, so you can check what the threat actors are doing, whilst you check your email:

Why keeping up with cyber-security news is important

Or you could attend one of our courses:

Business cyber security – Masterclass – Octagon Technology

Social Engineering and Email Cyber Security Training – Octagon Technology

Cyber Awake | Train Your Team To Protect Against Cyber Attacks

Or use one of our services that will add to your cyber security defence in depth:

IT Monitoring – Octagon Technology

Backups – Octagon Technology

Or if you need extra help or a specific cyber security project or investigation carried out, have a look at the services we offer:

Cyber Security, compliance and governance services at Smart Thinking Solutions

Here is what one client said about our services:

I am delighted to give a recommendation for Clive Catton and Smart Thinking Solutions. We are a small organisation with a limited budget and, when we needed some support with an urgent issue relating to the security of our systems, Clive was discrete, thorough, and professional at every stage.

The work carried out was to a high standard and within our budget and I felt confident that the questions we were posing had been addressed with a high degree of competence and expertise. I would not hesitate to recommend Smart Thinking Solutions and in fact we are continuing to work with them on further non-urgent projects.

Cyber security client 

Further Reading

Remember paying the ransom will not always bring back the data – take steps now – Smart Thinking Solutions