The Most Compromised Element in the Chain of a Cyber Scenario is You

/
The Most Compromised Element in the Chain of a Cyber Scenario is You

What is the top risk facing the cybersecurity of our organizations, agencies and governments? Hackers from Russia? North Korea? China? Nope. It’s you and me. “It’s really easy to read humans and also really easy to manipulate humans,” said Ian Yip, CTO at McAfee Asia-Pacific. “No matter what you hear from me in terms of all the technology and the hacking and the Dark Web, it is still the human that is usually the most compromised element in the chain of a cyber scenario. It’s the human that we are most worried about.”

Read More

Social Engineering Expert Advises to Verify Before Trusting

/
Social Engineering Expert Advises to Verify Before Trusting

“Practically all of the companies and governmental entities represented in this room are potential targets of interest to us,” Peter Warmka, CFE, CPP, director of business intelligence at Strategic Risk Management LLC, told the room full of conference attendees in his Monday-morning session. “We consider ourselves masters in social engineering. We can manipulate you.” Warmka was impersonating the mindset of a fraudster on the hunt for a vulnerable target, and the effect was enough to grab the attention of the audience. 

Read More

Cybersecurity Expert Speaks on Social Engineering Techniques and GDPR Vulnerabilities

/
Cybersecurity Expert Speaks on Social Engineering Techniques and GDPR Vulnerabilities

When you think about your intellectual abilities, do you consider yourself like Star Trek's Spock or like The Simpsons' Homer Simpson? I would imagine most of us would choose or strive to be more like Spock: slow, calculated, precise and logical. But, according to cybersecurity expert Dr. Jessica Barker, any one of us can move into a Homer Simpson-like state given the right type of social engineering.

Read More

The Growing Threat of Business Email Compromise

/
The Growing Threat of Business Email Compromise

“In the good old days when I started my career, my life was much easier,” said Issam Zaghloul, CISSP, CISA, CGEIT, Head of Information Security at Majid Al Futtaim Holding. He has been working in the cybersecurity field in one way or another for the last 16 years. The work was easier, he explained, because there wasn’t as much data to track, and it was all stored in centralized locations. In other words, things were simpler and much more straightforward.

Today, however, we eat data for breakfast, according to Zaghloul, and our systems of tracking, moving and storing data have become infinitely more complex.

Read More

Navigating the Open, the Deep and the Dark Webs

/
Navigating the Open, the Deep and the Dark Webs

“When the NSA can’t find something, they use Google,” says Cary Moore, CFE, CISSP, Associate Partner for the IBM Red Team. In the session, “Shining a Light on the Dark Web,” Moore delved into what can be found on the three different levels of the web: the Open, the Deep and Dark Web. As the chances for cyberthreats increase with today’s digital culture, so will the demand for anti-fraud professionals with the skillset to prevent the risks and investigate the avenues cybercriminals use to defraud their victims.

Read More

Untraceable Links: Technology Tricks Used by Crooks to Cover Their Tracks

/
Untraceable Links: Technology Tricks Used by Crooks to Cover Their Tracks

"I think we need a change in investigations. We need an evolution because of technology," said Walt Manning, CFE, president of Investigations MD in his session, "Untraceable Links: Technology Tricks Used by Crooks to Cover Their Tracks," at the 26th Annual ACFE Global Fraud Conference. "We have to change the way we think about technology because it's not working anymore," he continued.

Read More