In a future increasingly dominated by the Internet of Things, being attacked by a toaster could become a common occurrence, if we aren’t careful. This sobering revelation was made by Carl Herberger, former Pentagon security advisor, at the Assises de la Sécurité, a leading IT security event which took place this year in Monaco from 1st to 4th October. As farcical as it may sound, it’s not science fiction but the reality of IoT and security threats: from household applications connected to the IT systems of nuclear power stations to companies’ digital services, the security of data transferred via the cloud is a vital issue in this digitalised world. So how can these issues be addressed?
In The Art of War, Sun Tzu explains how a successful attack tactic is based on analysing our enemies’ weaknesses: any connected object is a potential risk:
“Connected watches can currently send information to up to14 outside recipients, and 20% of this is unencrypted, which means the password, which is often reused, is easily accessible,” says Laurent Heslaut of IT security company Symantec.
OVER 4 BILLION SECURITY EVENTS AND 50 INCIDENT ALERTS A DAY
Aside from IoT and Bring Your Own Device, controlling access to tools and data is no longer enough to guarantee security for organisations: with Big Data comes a whole new set of issues. Stanislas de Meaupou, cyber-security consulting director for Thalès, which is in charge of France’ nuclear power stations, explains the monumental task involved:
“For one of our biggest clients, we collect over four billion security events a day, which generate fifty incident alerts a day.”
It is therefore vital to identify high-risk behaviour, which is now possible, according to Dominique Loiselet of Blue Coat, a Californian company that provides security solutions:
“Just like with security camera footage, we can now ‘play back’ all the operations and get a better idea of the source of the attack.”
BIG INTELLIGENCE TO THE RESCUE!
In order to anticipate security attacks, the concept of Big Intelligence could prove to be vital, as it involves a company’s different departments in identifying uses of massive data volumes. And in order to be effective, this knowledge of Big Data in companies invariably requires more managerial intelligence and responsiveness to deal with any difficulties that arise. As Laurent Heslault explains:
“With lots of data, we can create more intelligence and automate responses to attacks.”
When it comes to anticipating and managing risks, choosing the right partner is essential for a successful digital transformation. And this is central to our Digital for All, Now movement: transforming zetabytes of data, whilst ensuring optimal security for businesses requires a high degree of IT hardware and change management expertise.