January was kicked off with a promise for us to be more active on the blog and introduce Fraud and other topics. This proved succesful in 2012:
7000 blog readers (55% up on 2010)
3500 unique visitors
4000 tweets via @securityspeak and @chatbacksy
2500 twitter followers
Readers from over over 50 countries
February saw scam awareness month
and we also received a
couple of emails asking for us to claim our lottery winnings, all we had to do was supply our bank details apparently?! It’s amazing how email addresses
get identified by scammers for this type of contact (its even more amazing that people fall for these scams).
The MPS kicked off a new counter terror
publicity campaign asking for people to look out for unusual activity or behaviours that might strike people
as not quite right and out of place in their normal day to day. Just one piece of
information could be vital in helping to disrupt terrorist planning and, in turn,
save lives. If you see it, report it.
March saw us talk about
the HOSDB INSTINCT exhibition which
considering this exhibition is designed largely for law enforcement and government agencies was actually quite interesting and food for thought when considering
the future applications that could find there way in to our airports and
hopefully other environments.
The ‘Insider Threat’ came all too true with a British Airways software engineer being sent down for 30 years
after being convicted for plotting to blow up a plane. This particular topic is
close to our hearts and seems to have fallen off organisations radars a bit and it's not being discussed
as much as it should be.
April was the month
that the Centre for Protection
National Infrastructure (CPNI) released a 'Public Realm Integration' document
which although it looked like it had been designed by Saatchi & Saatchi it still
offers some very good information about when and what you should consider when
deploying any Hostile Vehicle Mitigation in the public realm.
May brought us our 1 year celebration of the blog and the introduction of the Stuxnet, the Future of Malware posting.
May brought us our 1 year celebration of the blog and the introduction of the Stuxnet, the Future of Malware posting.
Paul celebrated our first year with a posting on Insider Threats.
I presented at The 8th
Annual CISO Summit in Rome which was attended by a very experienced audience. I must have done ok
because the organisers invited me to speak and chair a panel on social mediasecurity risks at the CSO later in the year. I have a lot of time for MIS
Training and will
be sharing more news, events and speaking opportunities throughout the forth
coming year, so keep an eye on our events page.
Towards the end of June we both
attended The Security Institute’s Annual Conference.
June also saw the introduction of The
National Security Workers Union (NSWU) in the UK.
July saw a couple of
guest bloggers posts and the Home Secretary Theresa May announced the terror threat level for the UK
has been reduced from severe to substantial. However, a terrorist attack still
remains a strong possibility and may well occur without further warning, she
went on to warn. Mrs May said: "The change in the threat level to
substantial does not mean the overall threat has gone away - there remains a
real and serious threat against the United Kingdom and I would ask the public
to remain vigilant." January 2012 we remain at ‘substantial’.
August we took leave and
you do not want to know where or what we did because that is boring.
September saw us post a
summary of the GMB report on From Workplace Watch To Social Spy: Surveillance In (and by) The Workplace.
October brought us National Identity Fraud Prevention Week (NIDFPW), which over the last
seven years has helped consumers and businesses alike to fight identity fraud.
NIDFPW brings together partners from both the public and private sector to
contribute their resources and experiences to help UK businesses and consumers
protect themselves against identity fraud. Research commissioned by Fellowes
for the campaign has shown that consumer confidence is at an all time low, with
96% of people concerned that the organisations they deal with aren’t treating
their data responsibly.November saw the UK government announce The New Cyber Security Strategy, I attended the Chief Security Officer (CSO) Summit in London where I presented on Security Assurance and chaired a panel session on social media security risks and it was also Get Safe Online Week 2011 (7th - 11th November 2011) What is Get Safe Online Week? Well if you missed it, it’s an annual event to raise awareness of internet safety issues. They reach out to consumers and small businesses through competitions, events and communications activity and to businesses and organisations through their annual Get Safe Online Summit to find out the latest updates or join us and follow them on Twitter @GetSafeOnline for all the latest news. Finally Chatback Security was approached after being recognised as known and influential security bloggers (get us) to participate in the Cyber security Challenge UK 2012 as journalists. Watch this space we will be talking all about it.
December saw
the MPS launch a dedicated police unit to tackle Metal theft, Anonymous were at
play again, attacking Stratfor (the website is still offline) and my son’s first published photos to support
the 4x4 crime prevention posting by Paul. Our recent posting by Infosec Island was posted at the end of December and still worth a read on
security risk management and it’s not all about assessment.
Happy New Year.... 2012 is here so what
does it hold for us personally and professionally. Well firstly, more of the
same but different, if that makes sense. The
year starts with us attending the first round of the Cyber Security Challenge
UK. The first 5 months see me being invited to speak at the Information Security
Executive Summit in Richmond,
UK, Counter Terror Expo in London, CISO
Summit 2012 in Prague and the Fraud Corruption Africa Summit in Zanzibar and then of course is the Olympics, London
2012.
Some of the threats and risks on the horizon that are going to require some effort in combating are:
Some of the threats and risks on the horizon that are going to require some effort in combating are:
- Continued trend in metal theft (cabling, ornate statues, church roofs etc), hopefully some change in legislation also around the selling/buying of scrap metal
- Protection of our critical infrastructure (in paricular SCADA systems)
- Hackivism
- Insider threats
- Olympics (surprise surprise)
- Under valuing physical security measures (?too much focus on cyber threats maybe)
- Large scale scams and frauds
- Recruitment of the right security people at the right time
We
seek to enhance our relationships with @GetSafeOnline and London Fraud Forum (LFF) and Paul will continue
with his work in the Security Institute whilst I intend to
work closer with London First who kindly invited
us to seminars and events on the Olympics and Cyber Crime.
We are always
looking for new areas of interest and guest bloggers or supporters, if you feel
we (or you) can contribute to your ideas please let us know via chatbacksecurity@gmail.com or contact either of
us direct via LinkedIn (Richard or Paul).
In
the meantime we wish you a very safe, secure and prosperous Olympic new year
and look forward to staying in contact with all our friends and supporters.
Thanks and enjoy. Richard
