FALL 2023

26
THE DISTRIBUTOR’S LINK
Joe Dysart
Joe Dysart is an Internet speaker and business consultant based in Thousand Oaks,
California. A journalist for 20 years, his articles have appeared in more than 40
publications, including The New York Times and The Financial Times of London.
During the past decade, his work has focused exclusively on ecommerce.
Telephone: 631-256-6602; web: www.joedysart.com; email: joe@dysartnewsfeatures.com
CYBERSECURITY: MANY FASTENER DISTRIBUTORS
ARE DOUBLING-DOWN ON RISK TRAINING
Given that punking humans is still one of the easiest
ways for a hacker to penetrate the most sophisticated
of cyberdefense systems, many fastener distributors are
doubling-down on training their employees to be on the
look-out for the latest hacker scams.
“Most security and risk leaders now recognize that
major disruption is only one crisis away,” says Richard
Addiscott, senior director analyst, Gartner (www.gartner.
com), a technology advisement firm. “We can’t control
it, but we can evolve our thinking, our philosophy, our
program and our architecture.”
Granted, most of us know by now that we need to
exercise care when clicking on external links, deciding
whether or not to download an attachment, or offering
up password and other information to someone on the
phone who seems like an employee who simply got
locked-out of the company’s network.
But the plain fact is that despite this common
knowledge, hackers keep tricking many of us into allowing
them to penetrate our business networks in just these
ways to wreak havoc, steal critical company data or hold
an entire system hostage with a demand for a ransom.
This vulnerability has become even more troublesome
in the post-Coronavirus Era, in which millions of employees
worldwide are now ‘remote workers.
In the process, that change also instantly made
innumerable corporate networks at fastener distributors
and other businesses even more vulnerable as remote
employees log onto business computer networks with
non-cyberprotected personal smartphones, personal
digital assistants, laptops and other computerized
CONTRIBUTOR ARTICLE
UNFORTUNATELY, HACKERS CONTINUE TO PLAY CAT-AND-MOUSE
WITH BUSINESS COMPUTER NETWORKS
devices.
Add an increase in hacker break-ins on cloud-based
systems, a jump in hacking attacks orchestrated by
nation states -- and increasing hacker access to tricks
and techniques powered by artificial intelligence -- and it
becomes clear that nothing less than 24/7 vigilance by
fastener distributors will be needed to simply thwart the
cybercriminal threat moving forward.
Fortunately, if you’re looking to refresh or deepen
the cybersecurity training you give to employees to
help safeguard your business, there are a raft of
training service providers that offer a number of different
approaches to realizing that goal.
Some training courses can be completed in an
hour-or-so. Others can be permanently embedded in
a fastener distributor’s computer network, continually
probing employee ability to identify – and avoid – common
hacker tricks.
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