Tag Archive for: understanding

Hackers, Fraudsters and Thieves: Understanding Cybersecurity in the Gaming Industry

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The gaming sector is under siege. The number of gaming-related cyber-attacks is growing at an alarming rate, and the online boom of the early 2000s brought hackers to the gate. In two decades, an industry worth tens of billions was transformed into one worth hundreds of billions in revenue – $221.4bn in 2023. Unsurprisingly, this growth and the opportunities it provides cyber-criminals did not go unnoticed. With such a lucrative target, hackers have long plagued the sector.

Moreover, the popularity of gaming has also been steadily increasing for years, with the total number of gamers soon to reach 3.32 billion in 2024. An increase in gamers has led to an abundance of targetable accounts storing all sorts of sensitive data. However, cyber-criminals aren’t just after gamers’ passwords and card details.

In-game digital assets, either through trickery or brute force, can be stolen or fabricated. Just last year, the most expensive CS:GO inventory, worth £2m, was stolen by hackers. And finally, let us not forget the bad actors who hack simply to gain a personal advantage over their fellow players.

What Impact Does This Have on the Gaming Industry?

From a developer or publisher standpoint, gaming-related cybercrime is detrimental to business. The inability to provide a safe and secure experience for players erodes consumer trust, undermines in-game economies and ultimately decreases game and microtransaction sales.

Just look at the bad PR that Fortnite has received recently. Admittedly, in this instance, a gaming behemoth like Epic Games will keep chugging along. But for smaller, less developed titles, such attacks can cause significant reputational damage. Consistently poor security practices will lead to diminishing player bases, either due to players giving up on the game or simply being unable to log in and play. For example, The Division is a game which experienced a player exodus largely due to rampant hacking. Despite the title’s financial success on release, The Division soon became known for its glitches, exploits and hacks that undermined the game’s long-term future. 

The most successful games are those that can maintain loyal player…

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Passkeys: The future of passwords? Understanding how they work

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N

early everybody agrees that the way we use websites and services is broken.

The username-and-password combo universally used is both annoying for users and not great from a security perspective. Amid data breaches, that most people repeat the same, easily guessable passwords between websites and given the ease of constructing fake sites to steal logins, the internet is crying out for a better solution.

Well, one might finally be here: passkeys. These do away with passwords completely, allowing your phone to vouch for your identity.

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Understanding Cybersecurity for Your Business

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As a business owner, you likely understand the importance of safeguarding your company’s information. You have likely invested in some form of cybersecurity, but what exactly is it, and what can it do for your business?

What is Cybersecurity?

Cybersecurity is the practice of protecting electronic systems and data from unauthorized access or theft. This can be done through a variety of means, such as firewalls, encryption, and user authentication.

Cybersecurity is a growing concern for businesses and individuals as the number of cyber-attacks increases. MDR (Managed Detection and Response) is a type of security service that helps organizations detect, respond to, and recover from cybersecurity incidents. MDR services are delivered by a team of security experts who proactively monitor an organization’s IT environment for threats and vulnerabilities. MDR services can help organizations improve their cybersecurity posture, reduce the cost of incident response, and minimize business disruptions.

Maintaining Strong Cybersecurity

Maintaining strong cybersecurity is essential for any business that relies on electronic systems and data. Cyberattacks can result in the loss of sensitive data, financial loss, and reputational damage. In some cases, they can even lead to legal liabilities.

Make sure to keep your software up to date. Hackers often exploit security vulnerabilities in outdated software to gain access to systems. When you keep your software up to date, you can help close the gaps and make it more difficult for hackers to break in. Always use strong passwords and multi-factor authentication. Strong passwords and multi-factor authentication can go a long way toward protecting your business from cyber-attacks. Multi-factor authentication adds an extra layer of security by requiring users to provide more than one piece of information to gain access to systems and data.

Understanding Cyberattacks

There are many different types of cyberattacks, but they can generally be divided into two categories:

  1. Malware attacks: These involve the use of malicious software, such as viruses and spyware, to damage or gain access to electronic systems and data. In some cases, businesses have…

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Techstrong TV: Understanding & Managing Digital Identities

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David and Charlene discuss how to effectively manage digital identities and assets in the rapidly evolving digital world. The video and a transcript of the conversation are below.

This is Digital Anarchist.

AppSec/API Security 2022

 

Charlene O’Hanlon: Hey everybody. Welcome back to Tech Strong TV. I’m Charlene O’Hanlon and I am here now with David Mahdi who is the chief strategy officer and CISO advisor over at Setigo. David, thanks so much for being with me here today. I am just so very excited to have a conversation with you about digital identities, because I know that it’s a very, very hot topic among a lot of organizations as they kind of seek to maybe lock down their systems a little bit more, at least understand what they’ve got so that they can lock it down. So thanks very much for being on tech rung TV and having the conversation with me. I’m very excited. Great to

 

David Mahdi: Well Charlene, thank you very much for having me. And I – it’s digital identity is certainly an area that I’m passionate about. And I think all of us have our own personal stories, whether it’s getting locked out of account at work or getting locked out of a personal account.  It all comes back to that.

 

Interviewer: Yeah. I can count on one hand how many times that happens to me in a week. So it’s but you know, it can be difficult to manage all those passwords. But let’s kind of start at the beginning. So we’re talking about digital identities and you know, these days there is not a person on this earth I think who doesn’t have some sort of digital identity. But what exactly are we talking about when we do say digital identity?

 

Mahdi: Yeah. Great question. So digital identity really well, first of all, we have to think of not just humans, right? You are you you’re Charlene, I’m David, and in the traditional physical world, you might have a passport, a driver’s license and all these types of IDs. And that’s how you, you know, when someone says, are you really Charlene in person and you show one of those ID cards, right? But obviously over the last few decades we’ve been doing more and more online, and we’ve kind of danced around ways to do digital identity online for the…

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