Call us on
0771 570 4894In the February edition of Cyber Security Insights we look at:
On Friday 2nd February there was an article in The Record from Recorded Future News reporting on a new parliamentary inquiry by the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy (JCNSS) said it would be raising questions about the security and resilience of elections across the U.K., especially on the work of the NSC’s Defending Democracy Taskforce. It is seeking submissions of evidence from “anyone with answers” to its questions of interest, including:
To be honest I find this unbelievable. Surely, we know how our election can be interfered with?
As we are a paper ballot the actual votes cannot be interfered with easily. It is from probably last year that nation states (Russia, China and Iran mainly) would have started influencing our election with fake news websites, fake news, deep fakes of leading politicians saying things they have not actually said and other misinformation.
Artificial intelligence makes producing misinformation easier and is going to be a huge issue in the coming elections in the UK and US especially.
What are your views, could we end up with a government chosen by an electorate fed with misinformation?
20 years ago this month Bill Gates promised the death of the password, saying "There is no doubt that over time, people are going to rely less and less on passwords. People use the same password on different systems, they write them down and they just don't meet the challenge for anything you really want to secure." Well, the second sentence is correct!
However, in 2024 there is promise on the horizon. The FIDO Alliance, an open tech industry association with a focused mission: reduce the world’s reliance on passwords. FIDO is supported by all the big tech companies, Microsoft, Google, Apple, AWS etc.
FIDO's answer is passkeys. A global authentication standard based on public key cryptography or encryption. Passkeys will allow users to sign in using biometrics (facial recognition, finger print, iris scan etc) or a security key across all of their devices. I already sign in using facial recognition on my banking app you say! At although you use your face to unlock your banking app there are still several layers of security (such as generating a security code) you go through. A passkey will be the public cryptographic key of the bank unlocked by your private cryptographic key.
When is this going to happen? Passkeys are being slowly rolled out. However, due to the number of legacy systems requiring passwords which are too old or expensive to update to passkeys and the number of app developers that will need to be trained in the technology passwords will, unfortunately, be around for years to come.
If you want to know how to manage your passwords securely and have unique, complex passwords for each logon credential contact us.
In 2023 the Information Commissioners Office reviewed the UK's top 100 websites for the compliance of their cookie banners to the UK GDPR 2018, the Data Protection Act 2018 and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulation 2003. What the ICO was looking for was that companies must make it as easy for visitors to websites to "Reject All" advertising cookies as it is to "Accept All".
53 organisations were contacted and warned unless they complied with the above paragraph they faced enforcement action. 38 have changed their banner, 4 are in the process of doing so according to the January update.
We highlight this because it is highly likely the ICO will continue looking at this. If you want to make sure your website is compliant contact us.
RCC are proud and excited to now offer the Phinity Risk Solutions platform to help manage your risk and compliance processes. The Phinity Risk Solutions platform integrates into your risk and compliance processes to help you decrease your risk exposure.
You are no longer an island in our organisations managing our cyber security risk. You are increasingly reliant on third parties to run core services and business operations and this exposes you to third party risks outside of your control.
Phinity Risk Solutions enable you to log, understand and manage these third party risks. A cyber security breach or data loss incident at one of your service providers could damage your reputation, interrupt your operations and cost you regulatory fines.
Contact us if you want to manage your risk better.
