With COVID-19 still an ever-present threat, many essential businesses have learned important lessons about business resiliency, maintaining operations, and mitigating the unique risks and considerations that a pandemic such as this brings to the forefront.

I was chatting with a chief information security officer (CISO) recently, and we started talking about motivation and the role of love and hate in driving ourselves towards our goals. In cybersecurity, we tend to think about external opponents, most notably white hats vs. black hats, but rarely discuss the internal factors that guide our day-to-day decisions. Humans are dynamic beings that aren’t driven solely by love or hate (despite what the chatter on social media may have you believe). We do, however, have predilections based on our personalities and environment. How we choose to deal with those influences shapes who we become. A good strategy is a combination of love and hate where organizations work towards a grand vision of their future while eliminating things they hate one after the other.

In 2019, Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks – a long-standing cybersecurity threat – accounted for $1.7 billion in losses, with cybercriminals using new tactics and techniques to carry out existing attacks. As cybercrime spikes in the wake of COVID-19, BEC’s toll is expected to rise this year. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) recently issued a warning to businesses on the growing threat of BEC attacks using the pandemic as a backdrop for unusual requests like payments to a “new” vendor or a change of account information.

Application programming interfaces (APIs) make everything a bit easier - from data sharing to system connectivity to delivery of critical features and functionality - but they also make it much easier for the bad actors (and the bad bots they deploy). Here are the top 5 API vulnerabilities that get exploited by hackers, including some tips to help close those gaps. 

Security magazine is pleased to announce our 2020 Most Influential People in Security – 22 top security executives and industry leaders who are positively impacting the security field, their organization, their colleagues and peers, and the national and global security landscape.

Paul Timm is Vice President of Facility Engineering Associates (FEA), which helps support and provide owners and managers with progressive and innovative solutions to facility lifecycle challenges.

An experienced nonprofit leader who specializes in startups, turnarounds and leadership coaching, Peggy O’Neill has over 35 years of experience working with nonprofit boards.

Paul Goldenberg is a highly decorated law enforcement and national security professional. He was a co-founder of Secure Community Network, the nation’s first Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and ASIS-recognized faith-based information sharing center, which has developed many of the security industries standards for faith-based security.

Paul Abbate currently serves as the Associate Deputy Director, a position in which he is responsible for the management and oversight of all U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) personnel, budget, administration and infrastructure, as well as the inspection of insider threat programs.