Thomas Arthur Couser

Russian hacks have particularly grown in the last 2 years and this is quite alarming for sure. Good news is that the main financial platform i.e. the e-commerce seems to be unaffected and this could probably be an indication that customer data would not have been stolen. There is a serious need to have more strict regulations with respect to such attacks and to equip retail companies, which are particulate high-transaction systems, with anti-cyber attack systems.

Elizabeth,
I really enjoyed reading this article and was quite surprised with the way the attacks were conducted on Natural gas pipeline. I believe public resources, especially government aided, are far more protected than private organizations data. While it’s still unsure whether the customer data was stolen or not, I would certainly not like to see anything here. I believe that there has absolutely been no harm in having dependency, but what was more important is the concrete firewall that should have been in place to prevent cyber-attacks on pipeline infrastructures.

Quite an interesting article though. This is definitely one of the breakthroughs as I would like to say as this would allow lesser management of passwords and users can easily login using either of single or multi-factor authentication protocols. The only solution for this is to partner with hardware manufacturing companies to integrate this in the systems before being shipped to consumers.

That’s pretty bad considering that these attacks happened on the top 3 financial institutions. It’s still unsure why the attacks happened, but if they have already compromised sensitive financial data, then it might actually cause huge financial loss or even breakdown of the Turkish economy. It’s important to revisit the security systems or try to grab hands of 3rd party security companies to see the source.

Elizabeth,

Great find! Here is a quick story…

I used to own a corner property between the local middle school and elementary school. It wouldn’t be uncommon to see groups of kids walking across my property before and after school. On a few occasions, I would have packages missing from my door. I remember a cell phone and cable box being the most frustrating, but also had a text book that went missing. This all happened within a short period of time, which forced me to notify the post office, ups, and fedex to hold the package at the local branch. I have moved since then and have never had an issue with my new house.

I see my situation isn’t uncommon based on the story your provided. This is why I think Amazon is offering this type of service with such high risk and liabilities. They must be seeing an increase in packages being lost / stolen during transit.

I can see how you have mixed feelings about this. I have the same uncertainty as you. I also think you are taking a big chance with letting a “stranger” in your house. Imagine:

1. If the delivery person was having a bad day and decided to do something “stupid”. Yeah, they may reimburse you for the “stupidity” if possible but what if it is something very serious? Example. Assault, robbery / burglary, or creepy things like, going through your personal things.

2. If someone followed the delivery person to your house, waited until the delivery person opened the door, sneaked in and hid somewhere while the delivery person was walking back and forth to unload the boxes, and waited until the delivery person left or better yet, said they were the owners relative / friend and stopping by to feed the dog, take out the trash, or what ever.

Yikes!

Hi Elizabeth,
Now that’s an interesting innovation from Amazon for sure. Amazon has previously innovated many products, but in terms of security of goods and services, this secure lock is definitely worth the money. This will ensure that the goods delivered are safe and are not stolen or opened.

This sounds great and if implemented properly by both Amazon and the customer, there are ways to mitigate the risks. Anyone with a security system such as Ring can see when Amazon made the delivery. The cloud cam is a good idea as it can track the delivery driver. I think as time progresses, they can modify it and it may become stronger in terms of deliveries.

You know it is really funny that this is a thing now. When Amazon came out with this I mentioned that this would be a huge vulnerability to a couple friends and lo and behold here we are. I do not understand how people thing that this is a good idea.

Elizabeth,
This is fantastic news. I think this is what is required from critical care services such as hospitals and especially mass businesses such as retail. Strengthening the PoS systems with chip cards and EMV are great examples as they do not store any data. It would be interesting to see how advancements in these areas take shape.

I found a few articles on this when I was looking for an article this week. A lot of the tips given are the same ones people should always use when online such as making sure the URL is spelled correctly and don’t click links from emails without verifying the sender. Hackers are becoming increasingly sophisticated though, making their websites and emails look more and more perfect. I don’t blame people for being wary of online shopping.

Elizabeth,
Very interesting article. I am surprised this high percentage of Americans don’t trust online shopping. I do believe the something, we share our sensitive information all time with different individuals and that can put us under the risk to be victims. These parties sell us items are individuals and they can be scams having the goal of attacking us.
Thank you for the article.

Hi Elizabeth:

Very interesting article and I was very surprise that China implement another laws to restrict the internet users.

Elizabeth,
In my opinion this law has many advantages and disadvantages, It will give the government a control of people activities over the internet which can target any people who are trying to do something wrong. At the mean time there is a big disadvantage since this law will touch the privacy of citizens who are now afraid to speak up freely about their ideas and thoughts.
Very interesting article and a big debate can be open regarding this topic.

what is freedom of speech? what is freedom of bear? Do you think someone doesnt need to be responsible for their words? There is no free launch. We all do know about it. If you were leader of China, what would you do in fact of 1 billion+ of population? There is no wrong or right (decision or law). Dont they want it’s the best for their citizen to get the best out of internet? We all make touch choices.

Hey Elizabeth,
This was a great article indeed. China has always surprised the world with its constant innovation and developments, being a closed economy. It put a ban on Google, Facebook, Yahoo, etc. to protect its internal systems. All these companies failed to make a mark and in fact, local companies in China, example, Baidu, rose up to show strength. I think all countries should have a balanced regulation in cyber threat and I would in many ways not encourage the approach that China has taken. Banning the most important networks also shows lack of development in many ways.

Really interesting article. I think this is a real problem and we are going to be seeing it more and more moving forward. I think it comes form they simply do now have the money to properly keep up with cost of cyber security.

Elizabeth – Your response to Cyber-attacks on SMEs is quite interesting to read. I have to agree that SMEs definitely face a lot of challenges because of lack of resources, poor understanding of cyber security threats, and lack of capital to invest in such measures. One interesting aspect that I found in your response is the fact that the recovery is slow and expensive. This is an important point that you made because if recovery is costly, then it puts SMEs again into problems because they cannot afford enough to implement anti-malware solutions quickly. This not only affects their capital expenditure, but also the operations on the whole.

Elizabeth,
Sharing this type of articles is very important to educate people and small companies to think more about creating their own IT security departments that would be in charge of educating employees and protecting their IT infrastructures. I believe these types of articles give a strong sign to these small companies to think seriously about security by hiring more IT people and define a good budget to run these security departments. These companies don’t really work hard enough to secure there IT departments, especially if they are small.

For an extreme example, an usual startup company, what is priority for them? Growing up their business, they must put resource on their priority. Data presented above only make statistical sense. There are countless small business. What makes them think they will be attacked? For bad guys, how come do they find out those nameless company? Do you think someone outside of company or someone inside of company has higher possibility find out the weakness of company?