Security – Page 9 – Peter Cavicchia II

Leaders are More Concerned with Physical Security Than Ever Before

The COVID pandemic has spurred the C-suite to recognize that ineffective health and safety protocols expose their people and their businesses to serious risk, according to a new article in Security Management Magazine. According to author Brian Phillips, CPP, PSP, “senior leadership is more concerned with physical security than ever before, advancing many security and risk professionals into a strategic position within the business.”

“While organizations should run risk assessments on a regular and ongoing basis,” he says, “most risk assessments tend to take place after a specific event or incident. COVID-19 has created a point in time where all companies must reevaluate their physical security program to factor in both current and future pandemic-level threats. If you haven’t already, it’s time to dust off those risk evaluations and take a serious look at your security posture.”

Read the full article: Three Steps to Avoid Security Theater.

Identity Theft on the Rise During COVID

The National Cyber Awareness System (NCAS), part of the Department of Homeland Security, is America’s first cohesive national cybersecurity system for identifying, analyzing, and prioritizing emerging vulnerabilities and threats.

According to NCAS, identity theft is on the rise during this period of COVID-19. It provides these guidelines for minimizing your risk:

Do business with reputable companies – Before providing any personal or financial information, make sure that you are interacting with a reputable, established company. Some attackers may try to trick you by creating malicious web sites that appear to be legitimate, so you should verify the legitimacy before supplying any information. (See Avoiding Social Engineering for more information.)

How to Stay On Top of Your Phone Safety

Smartphones — over the past decade, they have become an indispensable tool of daily life. We use these pocket-size computers for everything. This has always made them a top target for cybercriminals.

Given that we use our phones for sensitive transactions, like online banking, or something seemingly more innocuous like social media, which can accidentally make our most private information vulnerable, it is important to stay safe when using your phone. Iovation reports that in 2019, 59 percent of “risky transactions” in North America transpired on mobile devices. They found that telecommunications is the industry that sees the most mobile fraud, at 75 percent. The previous year, gambling was the most targeted industry, at 60 percent.