2 minute read time.
'Cyber Security is not as complex as it sounds' explained Dr Emma Philpott MBE, CEO of The IASME Consortium Ltd during the IET Webinar 'Simple Cyber Security', organised by the IET Hereford and Worcester Committee. In less than an hour, Emma was able to talk through some grounding insights on how to stay safe online.

It boils down to the 5 areas below;


 


Firewall Controls, Secure Configuration, Malware Protection, Patching (Software/OS) and Access Controls.


Working with industry leaders, their provided observations have been that by keeping the 5 areas above in check, a staggering 70% of attacks are fully stopped and 30% are further partially stopped.


She spoke about how your 'everyday' personal data is an attractive bounty for the digital bad actors out there, your website credentials can fetch up to £10 - £100 and your entire profile set can fetch up to £2500 on the dark web. Having good cyber hygiene starting with the 5 areas above increases the barrier to entry and the bad actors have more of a hefty task ahead to get access to your 'everyday' data. Image what the stakes might be for corporate or professional data !?


She also gave example of other basic security checks you can perform, such as enabling local computer firewall settings, having disc encryption enabled and separating admin and user accounts - this is valuable advice, a bad actor (pirate) might want to perform a 'cyber lateral movement' compromise, and by having separate admin accounts, you've just made it that much more difficult.


Mitigating cyber threats can be complex and industry is starting to realise the benefits of prioritising cyber training/skilling the right way, for example, IASME has specific programmes focused towards neurodiversity adults for whom these cyber concepts are less complex. She talked through social engineering efforts by bad actors around phishing attacks and the importance of having different system passwords to minimise the impact to all your other subscribed accounts if your profile is digitally compromised. Gulp - that's not the same password for everything ?.


A practical webinar that explained how you are already empowered to do cyber basics yourself making 'Simple Cyber Security' a core approach to your certification journey.