Critical friends and information security
You know someone is a good friend if they tell you that you have a smudge on your face, or something in your teeth—ideally before you go into that Zoom meeting. You know someone is a really good friend if they are able to tell you when you are making a mistake or putting yourself in harm’s way. And a ...
Should you pay the ransom?
The National Cyber Security Centre has published new guidance on what to do if you suffer a ransomware attack—and these attacks don’t just happen to big companies. A ransomware attack is likely to be a highly stressful time, and the attackers will put pressure on you to act quickly. If you’ve read the NCSC guidance in advance—maybe downloaded it to ...
Lost and found
Have you ever signed up for a local community group on social media—maybe your local town’s Facebook group or WhatsApp chat? If you have, you’ll have seen that certain topics come up a lot. After lost dogs, injured cats and missed bin collections, it’s usually lost smartphones. A lost smartphone is distressing for the owner of the phone. It can ...
What are you signing up for?
You might have seen recent reports of a man stealing login details from other people on a flight, using an ‘evil twin’ attack. Allegedly, he established a Wi-Fi hotspot that looked very like the one available for in-flight Wi-Fi. This is what the word ‘twin’ refers to in this kind of attack. Typically, this kind of attack is reliant on ...
Why is cyber security like brushing your teeth?
Have you ever gone to bed and had that nagging feeling that something wasn’t right—then you had to get up again because you’d forgotten to brush your teeth? (No? Just us forgetful ones then…) That’s the aim of embedding cyber security into your business:
- cyber security considerations and actions should become part of your routine activity
- you should feel ...
Privacy and personal information
Do you use or store any personal information? Personal data includes information such as names and email addresses, so the answer is almost certainly yes—though some organisations collect and use more than others do. No matter how much data you hold, you should have a privacy notice. These are often available via a company’s website, but they can also be, ...
