Digital trust is crucial for modern business relationships as increasingly, transactions require sensitive information to be shared online. However, a new report from ISACA—the Information Systems Audit and Control Association certification association —highlights significant gaps between what enterprises are doing now and what they should do to earn customer trust in their digital ecosystems.

The report combines insights from 2,755 business and IT professionals worldwide. It defines digital trust as confidence in the integrity of relationships, interactions and transactions among providers and consumers within an associated digital ecosystem.

While 85% of respondents said digital trust is extremely or very important to organizations today, and 63% said digital trust is extremely or very relevant to their job role, only 66% said their organization prioritizes digital trust in line with its level of importance. “This will be a growing concern, as four out of five respondents or 82% believe that digital trust will be more important in five years than it is today,” ISACA noted.  

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Here’s to the hashtags, the likes, the followers, the DMs, and the LOLs—June 30th marks Social Media Day, a time to celebrate and reflect on how social media has changed our lives over the years. 

Started in 2010 by media and entertainment company Mashable, celebrations have taken on all kinds of forms. Meetups, contests, calls to increase your social circle by one meaningful connection have all marked the date in the past. Yet this year feels like an opportunity to consider just how heavily so many of us have leaned upon social media these past months, particularly in a world where nearly 50% of the global population are social media users to some degree or other. 

What’s more, people worldwide spend an average of 145 minutes a day on social media. With users in the Philippines spending three hours and 53 minutes a day and users in the U.S. spending just over two hours a day, that figure can vary widely, yet it’s safe to say that a good portion of our day features time browsing around on social media. 

With that, Social Media Day is also a good day to give your social media settings and habits a closer look, all so that you can get the most out of it with less fuss and worry. Whether you’re using Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or whatnot, here are several things you can do that can help keep you safe and secure out there: 

1. Go private

Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and others give you the option of making your profile and posts visible to friends only. Choosing this setting keeps the broader internet from seeing what you’re doing, saying, and posting, which can help protect your privacy. 

2. Say “no” to strangers bearing friend requests

Be critical of the invitations you receive. Out-and-out strangers could be more than just a stranger, they could be a fake account designed to gather information on users for purposes of cybercrime, or they can be an account designed to spread false information. There are plenty of them too. In fact, in Q1 of 2021 alone, Facebook took action on 1.3 billion fake accounts. Reject such requests. 

3. Think twice before checking in

Nothing says “there’s nobody at home right now” like that post of you on vacation or sharing your location while you’re out on the town. In effect, such posts announce your whereabouts to a broad audience of followers (even a global audience, if you’re not posting privately, as called out above). Consider sharing photos and stories of your adventures once you’ve returned.  

4. The internet is forever

It’s a famous saying for a reason. Whether your profile is set to private or if you are using an app with “disappearing” messages and posts (like Snapchat), what you post can indeed be saved and shared again. It’s as simple as taking a screenshot. If you don’t want it out there, forever or otherwise, simply don’t post it. 

5. Watch out for phishing scams

We’re increasingly accustomed to the warnings about phishing emails, yet phishing attacks happen plenty on social media. The same rules apply. Don’t follow any links you get from strangers by way of instant or direct messengers. And keep your personal information close. Don’t pass out your email, address, or other info as well. Even those so-called “quiz” posts and websites can be ruses designed to steal bits and pieces of personal info that can be used as the basis of an attack. 

6. Review your tags

Some platforms such as Facebook allow users to review posts that are tagged with their profile names. Check your account settings and give yourself the highest degree of control over how and where your tags are used by others. This will help keep you aware of how you’re being mentioned by others and in what way. 

7. Protect yourself and your devices

Security software can protect you from clicking on malicious links while on social media, strengthen your passwords so your social media account doesn’t get hacked, and boost your online privacy as well. With identity theft a sadly commonplace occurrence today, security software is really a must. 

The post Protect Your Social Media Accounts from Hacks and Attacks appeared first on McAfee Blog.

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In ongoing partnership with Microsoft Azure, CIS has released two CIS Benchmarks, one updated and one new, for Microsoft Azure.

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In ongoing partnership with Microsoft Azure, CIS has released two CIS Benchmarks, one updated and one new, for Microsoft Azure.

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The demand for cybersecurity professionals has surged over the past decade.  According to (ISC)2’s 2020 Cybersecurity Workforce Study, while the global cybersecurity workforce need stands at 3.1 million, with nearly 400,000 open cybersecurity positions in the U.S. In addition, more than half of survey respondents (56%) say that cybersecurity staff shortages are putting their organizations at risk.

“This remains an emerging industry with threats shifting almost on a daily basis, including new threat actors, new technologies and the evolution of 5G,” says Erin Weiss Kaya, a Booz Allen talent strategy expert for cyber organizations. “Yet we’re still dealing with an 0% unemployment rate, with far more demand than we have current supply.”

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The Washington Post is reporting that the US Customs and Border Protection agency is seizing and copying cell phone, tablet, and computer data from “as many as” 10,000 phones per year, including an unspecified number of American citizens. This is done without a warrant, because “…courts have long granted an exception to border authorities, allowing them to search people’s devices without a warrant or suspicion of a crime.”

CBP’s inspection of people’s phones, laptops, tablets and other electronic devices as they enter the country has long been a controversial practice that the agency has defended as a low-impact way to pursue possible security threats and determine an individual’s “intentions upon entry” into the U.S. But the revelation that thousands of agents have access to a searchable database without public oversight is a new development in what privacy advocates and some lawmakers warn could be an infringement of Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures.

[…]

CBP conducted roughly 37,000 searches of travelers’ devices in the 12 months ending in October 2021, according to agency data, and more than 179 million people traveled that year through U.S. ports of entry.

More articles. Slashdot thread.

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This blog was written by an independent guest blogger.

If you were looking at all the opportunities data unlocks for your businesses, you’ve probably stumbled upon DaaS. DaaS stands for data as a service, which may appear as something overly complicated and expensive to consider. It’s quite the opposite, and it has the power to help a company leverage IoT and cloud data without investing heavily in infrastructure and software.

To truly assess whether it is complicated to implement and what benefits it delivers, you need to know what DaaS is. That’s why we will go over the definition of data as a service, its benefits, and common use cases.

What is Data as a Service (DaaS) – The definition

“As a service” has become a common term in the software industry, especially in the B2B niche as “Software as a Service”. It refers to one company renting the software to another company. You get a complete software product, ready to be used out-of-the-box. Now let’s go back to data as a service definition with that in mind:

“Data as a service is a software sold by data provider companies and developed to deliver ready-to-use data to end-users.”

There is one big difference between software as a service and data as a service. Unlike SaaS, which provides access to software tools, DaaS leverages software to provide data. It can provide either raw data or enable companies to use an API.

Finally, DaaS may appear as only one service, but that’s not the case: it is a couple of services bundled into one solution. The most common services in a DaaS offer include:

Data collection (including various sources such as IoT)
Cloud data storage
Data lifecycle management
Data modeling and processing (including transformation, quality control, and replication)
Data marketplace (enabling businesses to get the most relevant data for their needs)

Benefits of data as a service

The next big question you might have is whether it is worth implementing DaaS. That’s not an easy question to answer because every business is unique, especially regarding its data needs. To help you reach an informed decision, we’ve put together a list of benefits that DaaS offers.

 Reduced operational costs

Data is great because it can offer answers to so many questions. However, you need a lot of data to have accurate and relevant insights. Storing and processing big data costs money because it requires massive internal storage capacity and processing power.

Once you invest in DaaS, you will no longer need to continuously invest in your infrastructure and maintenance. The DaaS provider handles all these things internally and uses its own infrastructure, staff, and software to deliver ready-to-use data to you.

 Increased security

You probably know how hard it is to handle security in your organization. There are many variables to consider, and each of them requires a unique approach and relevant cybersecurity solution. Unfortunately, data is a hot target these days, and cyber criminals seem to be on a constant lookout for backdoors they can exploit to get their hands on valuable data.

When you start using DaaS, you can stop worrying about data security at least. DaaS providers use state-of-the-art cybersecurity solutions to keep data safe. They also have pristine backup policies to ensure you get access to data even if something unforeseen happens.

 Achieved compliance

Using data for business purposes is tricky if you want to comply with laws and regulations, especially if you use your customers’ data. You need to work with a team of lawyers to navigate the complex web of regulations, which costs both time and money.

Renowned DaaS providers take care of it for you. They have internal teams of lawyers ensuring that every data set that comes your way is not only ready for use but also legal to use. It helps you avoid all the nuances related to the legalities of using the data and expensive lawsuits.

 Ability to use the data how you see fit

One of the common problems organizations face when using big data is moving from one platform to the other. It often happens when they want to use data with different analytics software, and it can take a lot of time to completely move the data. Plus, there are certain risks of doing it, such as getting data corrupted or ending up with an incomplete data set.

With DaaS, you can forget about moving data from one platform to another. You can use the API to stream the data to any tool you need. It saves time and facilitates the entire process, ensuring the data remains complete and healthy.

Common use cases

While the benefits of DaaS may be attractive, you probably need more information to assess whether it is worth implementing DaaS in your day-to-day operations. The best way to do it is to discover DaaS use cases. That’s how most businesses utilize DaaS.

 Advanced business analytics

DaaS can provide you with enough data to run even the most complex and demanding business analytics. It can help overcome one of the most common challenges businesses interested in using data face – small data sets.

DaaS enables businesses to enrich their data sets. Some providers even offer telemetry data collected from IoT. With more relevant data at their disposal, they can get accurate analytics reports and get data-driven insights.

 Improved market segmentation

When a business does market research and segmentation, it bases its decisions on the data collected during the research. The bigger the data set, the more accurate results are. That’s where DaaS significantly improves market segmentation, even in niche cases such as email marketing.

With enriched data set on your customers, you will be able to better understand them and discover their unique needs and wants.

 Competitor analysis

Competitor analysis is also one of the most common use cases of data. However, organizations are limited to their own data sets, which are often outdated and small. For in-depth competitor analysis, they need access to big data.

DaaS is bound to forever change the analysis of competitors, especially for small and medium businesses. Through it, companies can access comprehensive data sets on their competitors and even assess competition in foreign markets.

With this data, they can also benchmark their business to discover whether their performance and profit are falling behind the industry average.

Final thoughts

Hopefully, the data as a service definition helped you understand what DaaS is and how it differs from SaaS. Given its many benefits to organizations and an extensive list of use cases, it’s safe to assume that the number of businesses using this service will only increase in the future.

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