As the U.S. federal government contends with a tidal wave of demands in the COVID-19 battle, agencies are pushed to unprecedented limits. Some good news: the U.S. government is excelling with digital transformation (DX) which is critical in this time of crisis as the cloud becomes a crucial dynamic with the world working remotely. New digital capabilities are enabling data to be more fully utilized. Unfortunately, some ground is also being lost in a tradeoff between aggressively transforming technology and data security. Increased use of technology, but a security disconnect For the past eight ..read more

The drastic changes we’re experiencing in our personal and professional lives would have been impossible to imagine just a year ago when we shared this blog about CEOs becoming more actively involved in data security conversations in the boardroom. Now, our new reality demands these questions are asked and answered by C-suite executives who must be certain about data security in uncertain times. Business continuity depends on security and strong access control. Before the COVID-19 crisis, IT professionals generally operated in two worlds: on-premise and in the cloud. The workers they support w ..read more

Companies of all sizes, from the largest public enterprise to the smallest private firm, are all susceptible to cyberattacks. Having a presence on the Internet opens us up to risk such as hackers, disruptors and insider threats. The COVID-19 crisis has created an unprecedented need for employees to work remotely, almost overnight. As a result, companies around the globe are doing everything they can to maintain a “business as usual” pace so there is minimal disruption, even if it means relaxing security processes and quickly adopting new tools that may create new risks. A strategic way to main ..read more

Earlier this year, the FBI released the 2019 Internet Crime Report. It includes information from 467,361 complaints of suspected Internet crime with reported losses in excess of $3.5 billion. With the high amount of cybercriminal activity including hacking attempts and phishing scams, the information in this report is quite timely. BEC is the costliest crime for businesses According to the report, almost half of the reported losses, approximately $1.77 billion, are due to BEC (Business Email Compromise) frauds, also known as EAC (Email Account Compromise) crimes. BEC is a sophisticated scam ta ..read more

While many companies have deployed extra measures to secure employees’ remote access to corporate resources and apps, it is important to think of all the necessary security measures to be taken in protecting sensitive data. Careful planning and forward-thinking security is the best way to protect your most precious asset – your data – either while it is in transit or at rest. Data breaches are usually the result of stolen identity or IT configuration errors that allows access to unauthorized users, resulting in the loss of control of our most sensitive Personal Identifiable Information (PII) d ..read more

The need to ensure the ability to work from anywhere is more important than ever. In today’s business environment, constant access to information and services is essential for communication and getting business done whether you are in sales, finance, marketing or the legal profession. This is especially true when we face global incidents like we face today. Such unplanned events force us to rethink how we work. That’s why it’s important to ensure employees can not only collaborate, but that they can access corporate applications and information remotely in the same, secure way as if they were ..read more

Disconnecting from your mobile device, laptop or tablet can be as good as a holiday. Simply taking a pause from email and social media in favor of a good book or conversation is known to increase your mood and life satisfaction. But it’s also a chance to step back and re-evaluate our online usage. In my family, we regularly ‘unplug’ and use the opportunity to discuss cyber awareness and topics such as the risks to our family information, how we can improve personal safety, and what are we doing to prevent identify theft. While unplugging isn’t an option for business, the notion of stepping bac ..read more

This Sunday, March 8 is International Women’s Day – an important day at Thales. Not only are we celebrating all the hard-working women in our company, but we are taking this opportunity to recognize the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women around the world. This year’s theme, #EachforEqual, is about promoting the concept that an equal world is an enabled world, and we applaud all those that are working hard to forge gender equality. To help commemorate International Women’s Day this year, following is a Q&A with our very own Heather Johnston, VP of Legal Affairs f ..read more

This blog is co-written with Shian Sung from Keyfactor In today’s development environment, it’s important for every organization to utilize code signing as a way to ensure that the applications and updates they deliver are trusted. This starts from the build process and goes all the way through to the release in order to develop code that maintains a strong root of trust, and with a high degree of authenticity and integrity. However, as development has become more agile and, at the same time, more complex, implementing code signing practices at scale now has significant security implications ..read more

The Verizon 2019 Data Breach Investigations Report advises organizations to deploy multifactor authentication throughout all systems and discourage password reuse. MFA awareness is not new to CISOs or IT teams. And yet, according to Norton, data breaches for 2019 included 3,800 publicly disclosed breaches, 4.1 billion records exposed, and a more than 54% increase in the number of reported breaches vs. the first half of 2018. The combination of prominent media-reported mega breaches and less famous identity thefts have promoted the industry to adopt passwordless authentication methods. This has ..read more