Having a strong, complicated and unique password for each of your online accounts is super important, but also super difficult if you’re relying on remembering all of those passwords yourself. Writing them down is an option, but there are lots of caveats with that, which I explain here. Writing passwords down is only a good idea if you only need them in the house, never when you’re on the move or at work, and if you completely trust everyone you live with. Enter password managers. Password managers act like a vault: you just need to remember one complicated password (do make it a good one!) fo ..read more

This morning I was invited on to BBC 5 Live to discuss Britain’s readiness in terms of state-on-state cyber activities. Listen to what I had to say below: http://cyber.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/5LiveMarch2018.wav   Dr Jessica Barker ..read more

There are some simple things you can do, as an individual, to better-protect yourself online.   Look After Your Accounts Take care of your passwords. Make them strong and don’t use the same password across different websites. You might want to look into using a password manager; the UK government has provided some helpful information on that here. For a home computer user, you can also consider writing your passwords down in a book and storing that book in a safe place. Bear in mind: what is the worst thing that can happen here? People you share the house with may find the book and use ..read more

I was interviewed on Sky News on Tuesday 8 August discussing the HBO hack. “Cyber attacks can happen to anyone” – security consultant Dr Jessica Barker talks about the #GameOfThrones hack #GoT #SNT pic.twitter.com/LSWe74S0ya — Sky News Tonight (@SkyNewsTonight) August 8, 2017 It’s hard to get all of the interesting points about an issue into a quick news interview; the key points about the story from my perspective are: The stealing and leaking of Game of Thrones scripts before the episodes air gives the criminals their headlines, but HBO are probably far more concerned with the internal do ..read more

Perceptions of trust A piece of research published recently by Ponemon Institute has found that consumer trust in certain industries may be misplaced: 68% of consumers say they trust healthcare providers to preserve their privacy and to protect personal information. In contrast, only 26% of consumers trust credit card companies Yet, healthcare organisations account for 34% of all data breaches while banking, credit and financial organisations account for only 4.8%. Banking, credit and financial industries also spend two-to-three times more on cyber security than healthcare organisations It i ..read more

A couple of months ago, I was invited to Seattle to discuss the human elements of cyber security for Microsoft Modern Workplace. We talked about topics like communication, fear, social engineering, how to engage with senior executives and the idea of people as the ‘weakest link’. It inspired me to pull together some of my thoughts and work regarding how I define the human nature of cyber security.   http://cyber.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/JBarker_microsoft_clip.mp4 “If you engage in changing your culture, if you engage in empowering your staff… then people go from being the  ..read more

For my second Digital Guardian blogpost, I continued looking at GDPR. As is the case with many cybersecurity projects, getting senior-level support for GDPR compliance efforts requires effective communication. As research from (ISC)2 has highlighted, one of the biggest challenges with GDPR projects is securing senior-level support (and the budget that goes with it). Read what I have to say in Digital Guardian for some tips on how to get the board on board. By Dr Jessica Barker ..read more

MEAC Presidents vote down Chicago State. Now what?  HBCU Gameday ..read more

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