Cybersecurity experts say threats are constant, but manageable

A PANEL of experts from business and academia spoke at a Cybersecurity Summit hosted today at the Crowne Plaza by Providence Business News.
A PANEL of experts from business and academia spoke at a Cybersecurity Summit hosted today at the Crowne Plaza by Providence Business News.

WARWICK – Keeping yourself, your business and your customers safe from the predations of cyber criminals is a constant and deadly round of Whack-a-Mole, and everyone needs to have a mallet in each fist and his head in the game at all times.
A panel of experts from business and academia spoke at a Cybersecurity Summit hosted today at the Crowne Plaza Providence-Warwick by Providence Business News. For many of the hundreds of listeners, the information about risks from cyber crime ranged from sobering to scary, but the experts also offered tools for businesses to protect themselves.
Francesca Spidalieri, of Salve Regina University, said that 90 percent of malicious hacking into personal or business networks happens when an unwary employee opens the door to a hacker by mistake, often by simply clicking on a virus-infected email.
The course of action, in those cases, would be better training or re-training in the workforce, especially for the 78 percent of employees who don’t follow employers’ security policies, according to an AT&T Cybersecurity Insights Report.
Speakers at the summit included Scott DePasquale, CEO of Utilidata Inc., a business that helps utilities modernize power grids and chair of the R.I. Cybersecurity Commission; Timothy J. Edgar, a fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Public Affairs and a cybersecurity expert; and Spidalieri, a senior fellow for cyber leadership at the Pell Center of Salve Regina University.
Additional voices from the business world included Kevin Ricci, director of information technology at LGC+D/IT Solutions. Expert advice about cyber insurance and related matters was offered by Zach Scheublein, vice president of Aon’s Financial Services Group, as well as Shiraz Saeed, a cyber liability specialist for AIG Property and Casualty.
As use of the Internet and the number of devices used by persons and businesses continues to grow worldwide, the exposure to cyber crime becomes ever greater. The AT&T cybersecurity report said there was a 48 percent increase in security breaches from 2013 to 2014, and 43 million business security incidents were reported in 2014. Moreover, 600,000 Facebook accounts are compromised every day, according to Heimdal Security 10 Hacking Facts.
A common method of cybercrime is spear phishing, which is an attempt to acquire sensitive information by disguising oneself as a known and trusted entity. Motives for cyber crime include outright theft, political “hacktivism” to make a political statement or induce government transparency, industrial espionage, and disruption of services and property. Hackers can hide in a breached network, extracting information without detection for many weeks or months.
Spidalieri and other speakers emphasized that people and business can fight back.
Methods include frequent changes of passwords, using longer words or phrases; encrypting data before passing it through email; backing up data; training employees to avoid mistakes that allow hackers to slip into the network; examining contracts with vendors, like cloud-service providers, to determine liability; and buying cybersecurity insurance.
Presenting sponsors for the summit were Aon Risk Services and LGC&D/IT Solutions. Co-sponsors of the program were AIG Insurance, Cox Business and Salve Regina University.

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