Like most during the coronavirus pandemic, and the resulting COVID-19 infections, I like the majority of responsible people have been applying the rules, and taking care to do my bit to mitigate the travelling viral conditions for the sake of getting back to normal (or to be correct to the New Normal). However, sadly there would seem to be some within our communities who feel the enforced rules simply do not apply to them! Thus, do we consider such members of our society to be reckless, careless, ignorant, or basically uneducated – or is it a mix of all four?
Moving on, the observations made above are derived from my social locality where people have, for example, hosted large scale parties, in locations in which social distancing (I understand) was far removed from the recommended government guidelines. However, what has boiled my blood to the point of sitting down and putting key-to-screen is the Cyber Security Summit to be run in Sao Paulo Brazil in July 2020 – a part of the world which has been hit with the very worst state of global infection with an associated sad recorded, known-known death rate of 100,000 COVID-19 victims who have lost their lives (RIP). Am I really to believe that security professionals would invite delegates to attend and speak at such a high risk location – is it a case of commercialisation overtaking security prowess, or is it that there is a gross misunderstanding of what the word ‘Security’ really stands for?
Do the math on this problem – you are the CISO at a large UK based company when one of your valued key Cyber Security Team members comes into your office and requests to attend the said Brazilian based event. The CISO being a professional security person runs a mind based risk assessment based on their known-known knowledge and facts, and arrives at a decision – question is, can you guess what that decision was?
John is the Principle at Shadow-Intelligence (Si), partnering with PALISCOPE, BreachAware and iStorage. He is a Visiting Professor at the School of Science and Technology, Nottingham, Trent University (NTU) and holds the appointment of Editor in Chief for the International Journal of Cyber Forensics and Advanced Threat Investigations (CFATI). For the last decade he has delivered training courses in the Middle, and Far East to Commercial, Industrial, the Financial Services Sector, and Military Agencies, including the UAE, US, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia (KL), Singapore, Argentina, and Sao Paulo
He served in the Royal Air Force 22 years’, specialising in Counterintelligence, working with UK Agencies such as GCHQ/CESG, and others in the fields of SIGINT, COMINT and Satellite Communications, holding appointments such as System ITSO for a CIA SCIF.
In the commercials sectors of IT/Cyber he has worked for/with Logica, Bae, T5, GM, Experian, Betfair, Palace of Westminster, House of Lords/Commons, TSol (Treasury Solicitors) and provided Consultancy to the Saudi Arabian MOD, TRA (Telecommunications Authority (Dubai) and the Military Academy of Malaysia (KL) on SOC, CSIRT, Digital Forensics and OSINT. Within the last 5 years he has focused on Geopolitics, with global expertise around the UAE and Russia, Anti-Terrorist Operations (ATO), Cyber-Warfare, Dezinformatsiya (Disinformation) and Maskirovka (Military Deception).
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