VINT-The-Dark-Side-of-Social-Media-Alarm-Bells-Analysis-and-the-Way-Out

20
aNalYSiS
6 Social media a danger to cyber security
To obtain a picture of what we can expect in the realm of
cyber attacks and crime, we sought advice from Websense,
a company that has been producing security software since
1994. The following seven predictions, which Websense
claims can be made with a large degree of certainty, are far
from trivial and, unfortunately, are once again intimately
linked to social media.
1. At the top of the list, in huge bold letters, there is a
serious warning about naïve use of social networks and
social media. Websense cautions about the dangers of
cyber crime, and your social media identity may be more
interesting than even your credit card. We have now
become accustomed to Social Security Numbers and
credit card data being stolen and sold online, but in the
coming year the online mafia will intensively switch its
attention for the first time to our social media IDs.
2. The second warning is directly related to the first. The
most important blended cyber attack will come via
our so-called “friends” on social media and networks.
We currently have campaigns on TV against phishing
e-mails, an increasing number of so-called “Advanced
Persistent Threats” are also on their way, based on social
forms. Playtime on social media is definitively over.
3. OK, where are we most active on social media? That’s
right, on our mobile devices. Next year we will encounter
a surge of more than a thousand cyber attacks on
smartphones and tablets. This has been on the cards for
years, and we were ultimately hit by the first real mobile
malware in 2011. Botnets and exploits have now also
appeared, because, in the post-PC era, criminals and
hackers have switched their attention to mobile devices.
4. In the technical domain, mobile platforms and the use of
Google, Facebook and Twitter mean that the so-called
“safe” SSL/TLS tunnels (Secure Sockets Layer/Transport
Layer Security) for corporate IT can cause a blindspot.
This occurs when security tools are not capable of
decrypting in the tunnels. As a result, such flawed
products have no idea of what is going in and out of the
business network.
5. As an extension of the previous point, this warning is a
rather simple one: Containment Is the New Prevention.
It means that there must be permanent supervision of
whether or not data are leaking away or are infiltrating
via network connections. This is done by installing
a containment zone that is constantly monitored. If
unusual traffic is taking place there, the route in or out
can be closed and the data in question can be analyzed.
Organizations with the proper software will be right on
top of the problem and the appropriate action can be
automatically taken within seconds.
6. There are also sufficient external (social!) factors that
form a source of concern, such as the Olympic Games
in London, the presidential elections in the US, and the
infamous end-of-the-world predictions. This kind of
happening can always be used to prepare and implement
large-scale cyber attacks. This will take place via search
engines, but also increasingly via social media and networks.
We have all underestimated this risk. At present,
we still do not associate social media with cyber crime,
but that is going to change forever in the near future.
7. To summarize everything in the final point: the dangers
of “social engineering” — a pleasant euphemism — and
malevolent anti-virus products will increase enormously.
Particularly the so-called “exploit kits”, the software
packages that enable systematic attacks, will play a
major role in this context. Attention will be shifted from
the installation of anti-virus tools to the installation of
system tools, for defragmentation and a faster Internet
connection, for example.