Tag Archive for: aims

As Japan’s neighbors ramp up offensive capabilities in cyberspace, SDF aims to bolster defense

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As neighboring China, Russia and North Korea develop increasingly sophisticated cyberattack capabilities, Japan is shifting toward a more robust posture in cyberspace, with Tokyo recently announcing plans to “fundamentally strengthen” the Self-Defense Forces’ capabilities.

Still, there are concerns about how a defensive cyber policy — limited by constitutional constraints — can deter serious attacks, particularly given that the country’s private sector, especially small and midsize companies, has been slow to upgrade its cyberdefenses.

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Why Accenture’s New Security Chief Aims To Hire More Non-IT Workers To Combat Cybercrime

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Even though he already has 16,000 employees under his command, Paolo Dal Cin, the new chief of Accenture’s global cybersecurity business, knows he’ll need more people to combat the ever-growing threat of cyberattacks.

But Dal Cin, formerly Accenture’s cybersecurity chief for Europe, says fighting cybercriminals isn’t just about technology. It’s also about understanding the mindset of cybercriminals.

So Dal Cin, who took command of Accenture’s global security business on May 1, said he wants to hire more non-IT people, such as criminologists and social scientists, to help in the battle against cyber-attackers.

[RELATED STORY: Accenture’s Most Highly Compensated Executives In 2021]

“What we want to do is not to just hire more, but to hire more diverse talent,” Dal Cin said in a recent wide-ranging interview with CRN.

“Security is becoming more multidisciplinary. We want to involve people that (are) studying social sciences. We’d like to have more criminologists. We’d like to add people with a different background. When you are doing a threat analysis, it is very important to understand the threat-actor mindset. This is not just about technical skills. It is more also about soft skills. So we want to diversify our talent pool.”

He added: “Looking forward, we want to attract people not just from, you know, engineering or computer science degree, but from a much broader talent pool.”

And Dal Cin, who is based in Milan, Italy, and who has worked at Accenture since 2003, said he also wants to hire more personnel with deep knowledge of specific industries, in order to better understand the security needs of large enterprise and other clients.

“We’d like to have also more people really dig into specific industries,” Dal Cin said. “Protecting a national critical infrastructure like a utility company is quite different from protecting a banking institution. They have different goals (and needs) in security in order to protect their value chains. So for us, it’s also important to understand even more the industry (of a client), the specific industry business, in order not to just to protect the technology. We deeply believe that security…

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Assessing the aims of the Government Cyber Security Strategy

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January saw the UK government publish yet another cyber security strategy, the Government cyber security strategy 2022, not to be confused with the National cyber strategy 2022, published only a month earlier.

This new strategy is focused on ensuring the government’s critical functions are hardened to cyber attack by 2025, with all public sector organisations becoming more resilient to cyber threats by 2030. This clear aim is welcome, but is it realistic or achievable? 

The timelines set out in the strategy are incredibly tight. Government departments have many competing demands on them, budgets are under pressure and cyber security is not at the top of many of their priorities. Implementing the strategy by 2025 will be difficult.

The strategy has two pillars: build a strong foundation of organisational cyber security resilience, underpinned by the adoption of the NCSC Cyber Assessment Framework (CAF); and “defend as one”, which will be enabled by the establishment of a Government Cyber Coordination Centre (GCCC). These pillars link to the National Cyber Strategy’s key message of alignment and integration across government.

In addition, these pillars are supported by five objectives:

  • Manage cyber security risk;
  • Protect against cyber attack;
  • Detect cyber security events;
  • Minimise the impact of cyber security incidents;
  • Develop the right cyber security skills, knowledge and culture.

All these are sensible and provide an easy-to-understand approach to build a transformation programme around. However, experience suggests these objectives are difficult, costly and time-consuming to achieve, especially in operations-focused government departments. 

Integration will be key

Success will be determined by the levels of integration achieved across government, regions, with industry partners and specialist organisations, maybe even with our international allies.

The strategy enables cross-government integration through the creation of the GCCC and the use of the CAF. It will also be important to integrate with all the people required to deliver this strategy – it is not just about cyber security specialists. Human resources, commercial, and technology…

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A new crop of shopping tools aims to help consumers beat the supply chain crunch

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“I’ve never been a gambler, but I can absolutely say there’s a thrill to getting something that you know seconds later will be gone,” he said. “It’s almost indescribable. It’s the opposite of FOMO [the fear of missing out]. There’s a huge dose of serotonin the second you get that ‘order completed’ screen.”

Where people once fought over luxuries like concert tickets and Supreme drops, now they’re fighting for household essentials and medical supplies. The grayed-out “purchase” button on websites everywhere is emblematic of a consumer era when virtually everything is at our fingertips, but also perpetually just out of reach.

In response, a small but dedicated community of programmers, journalists and social media content creators has sprung up to announce whenever a retailer such as Amazon or Walmart have restocked, or “dropped,” more product. Over the course of the pandemic, these stock hunters have devised ever more sophisticated methods for learning about impending drops earlier and earlier — and for notifying what has become a loyal following numbering in the hundreds of thousands for some accounts.

Demand for their services is so high, some have transformed stock-hunting into a full-time job, earning a bit of cash every time a user clicks an alert or pays for a subscription feature. Every in-stock notification acts as a dinner bell ringing across the internet, prompting a mad scramble as shoppers try to shave precious seconds off their efforts to secure a Covid test, a game console or a popular children’s toy. For many, it’s even become its own form of entertainment.

“Just getting the gaming console is kind of a game in itself,” said Marc Holgate, founder of the tracking app HotStock.io.

As long as supplies remain tight, the incentive for shoppers to turn to these tools will continue to grow. And the more people flock to these tools, the harder it may become for other shoppers to avoid using them for fear of missing out on an important shopping advantage.

The rise of professional stock hunters

What many widely followed stock hunters have in common is that they began as ordinary consumers themselves, looking for a coveted item.

Matt Swider, a New York-based technology…

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