Recent research conducted by IBM among global boardroom and C-suite executives in 28 countries found that better cybersecurity is among their top technology priorities. But while CMOs “are key drivers of digital-based growth for most organizations, many are not in the habit of working with the CIO, and are certainly not in the habit of working with the security department.” In fact, besides voicing a desire for a seamless customer experience, CMOs have been reluctant to get more involved with online customer identification and other cybersecurity decisions. Security experts have generally translated this wish into procedures that are as easy and invisible as possible for brand shoppers, while also delivering a degree of online security.
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All too often companies misunderstand the value of their cybersecurity teams and underfund their development. At the same time, many of these teams struggle to communicate to leaders the importance of having a well-funded security program. These struggles can lead to serious gaps between the resources allocated to security and the actual support needed to properly protect corporate and customer information.
Before joining Facebook as a security engineer in 2015, I worked in industries from consulting to manufacturing to retail. I observed that leaders often treat security as a liability cost — until the company experiences a security breach, after which increased support is a given. But typically, increased support came too late, and was proportional to the size of the breach and subsequent media attention.
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The National Institute for Science and Technology has published a draft questionnaire that companies and other organizations can use to assess their cybersecurity “maturity” — a response, NIST says, to demand from the private sector.
Boosters say the document will help specialists explain the importance of cybersecurity to the company’s bottom line — the “holy grail” of business cybersecurity. But some critics have questioned how useful it will be to smaller companies.
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The sparsely populated Spratly Islands, a collection of hundreds of islands and reefs spread over roughly 165,000 square miles in the South China Sea, are very quickly becoming the center of one of the most contentious international disputes between world powers since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Alarmingly, the use of cyber attacks in this dispute suggests we might already be in the midst of a new Cold War playing out in cyberspace — where America’s advantage is not as clear as it is with conventional armies and navies.
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Hybrid cloud models offer many well-documented benefits, but they also introduce more complexity for securing data and applications across the enterprise. This added complexity requires an increasingly diverse skill set for security teams. That’s a challenge, considering the growing shortage in cybersecurity skills. In a recent study, 46 percent of organizations said they have a “problematic shortage” of cybersecurity skills—up from 28 percent just a year ago. One-third of those respondents said their biggest gap was with cloud security specialists.
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The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a Commerce Department agency, has released a draft Baldrige Cybersecurity Excellence Builder, describing it as a self-assessment tool to help organizations better understand the effectiveness of their cybersecurity risk management efforts. NIST is requesting public comments on the draft document, which blends the best of two globally recognized and widely used NIST resources: the organizational performance evaluation strategies from the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program and the risk management mechanisms of the Cybersecurity Framework.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: OCTOBER 3, 2016
Allentown, PA: Netizen Corporation, an award-winning provider of innovative software assurance and cybersecurity solutions for government and commercial markets, was awarded a 5-year $9.9 million U.S. Army contract on September 30th for NIST Risk Management Framework (RMF) Security Control Assessor-Validator (SCA-V) support. On this contract, Netizen will provide cybersecurity, compliance, and risk assessment services for mission-critical U.S. Army technology systems operating on both classified and unclassified networks. The NIST RMF consists of a series of processes used to assess and ensure the security of operations and assets for an organization in accordance with applicable laws, policies, standards, and regulations.
“Netizen has earned nearly $11 million in prime contracts with the Department of Defense (DoD) over the past year to provide expert solutions for their mission-critical operations across the country. We are quite proud that the U.S. Army, as well as many other customers, have consistently chosen to leverage our renowned White Glove Service™ and advanced CyberSecure Solutions™,” said Max Harris, Netizen’s Chief of Business Development and a veteran of the U.S. Army.
He added that this five-year contract will create at least 15 new positions and be performed at various military locations across the country and potentially worldwide. Netizen and partner companies, Virginia-based BreakPoint Labs (BPL) and Mississippi-based NextStep Innovation (NSI), will be supporting the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) headquartered in Vicksburg, Mississippi with additional locations in Alexandria, VA; Champaign, IL; and Hanover, NH.
“It’s terrific that, especially as a veteran-owned company, we are able to so directly secure, support, and enhance the technical and cyber capabilities of our country’s armed forces in a truly customer-centric manner. This further demonstrates the high levels of confidence placed in us to provide trusted expertise across a wide range of markets,” said Michael Hawkins, Netizen’s CEO and also a U.S. Army veteran.
About Netizen Corporation: Named the Lehigh Valley’s “Emerging Business of the Year” in 2015 and a recipient of DoD customer service awards for exemplary contract performance, we are a Pennsylvania-based, Veteran-owned company specializing in software assurance and cybersecurity. Our mission is to develop and leverage innovative solutions that enable a more secure and integrated cyberspace for clients in government and commercial markets. Industry sectors served include healthcare, defense, intelligence, civilian government, finance, energy, and others. Learn more at https://www.NetizenCorp.com.
PRESS POINT OF CONTACT:
Max Harris
Chief of Business Development
1-800-450-1773 ext. 704
MHarris@Netizen.us#####
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When security breaches make headlines, they tend to be about nefarious actors in another country or the catastrophic failure of technology. These kinds of stories are exciting to read and easier for the hacked company to admit to. But the reality is that no matter the size or the scope of a breach, usually it’s caused by an action, or failure, of someone inside the company.
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The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s disclosure earlier this month that foreign hackers had infiltrated voter registration systems in Illinois and Arizona came as no surprise to some cybersecurity experts.
“Given where cybercrime has gone, it’s not too surprising to think about how information risks might manifest themselves during the election season to cause some level of either potential disruption, change in voting, or even just political fodder to add the hype cycle,” says Malcolm Harkins, chief security and trust officer at network security firm Cylance.
Growing concern that hackers sponsored by Russia or other countries may beattempting to disrupt the presidential election is certainly not far-fetched, given the recent data breach at the Democratic National Committee headquarters. In fact, hacking an election is shockingly easy, according to a report by the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology, a cybersecurity think tank.
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Since May, the Defense Department has more than doubled the number of approved commercial cloud computing providers.
The military services and agencies now have more than 50 vendors to choose from to buy commercial cloud services at low and moderate security levels.
That’s a good start for DoD.
“For low-risk stuff, we actually access those clouds over the internet. When we move into moderate risks, we’ve actually worked direct connects into the commercial providers,” said Rob Vietmeyer, DoD’s government lead and strategic adviser to the chief information officer on enterprise cloud computing, at the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Cloud Computing Forum and Workshop on Sept. 15. “In commercial data centers, we can do our network peering. We’ve tied it into our perimeter defense for our Non-classified Internet Protocol Router Network (NIPRNet) environment so we can firewall and filter for some of that traffic so we can protect the NIPRNET from any of the threats that may originate in that cloud environment.”
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