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Identity is Security: Baby Dark Web

“The threats are real, the attackers motivated.” Sounds like a line out of an action movie, but it’s actually how Verizon kicked off their 2019 Data Breach Investigations Report. This years’ highly-anticipated report identified everything from cloud misconfigurations, to ‘business email compromise (BEC),’ and intellectual property theft. And digging a bit deeper, the report also highlighted a few newer trends: hackers are targeting corporate executives (senior leadership is 12 times more likely to be the target of social incidents); cryptomining isn’t as common as we think it is; social-based attacks are declining; and the health care sector is the only industry where insider attacks are more common than outsiders. This report solidifies why cybersecurity needs to be at the top of the agenda for every organization. As time goes on, the bad guys are continuing to find new ways of tampering with our cybersecurity.

Another reason why cybersecurity needs to be top of mind: the Dark Web. This headline caught my attention this week—turns out the Dark Web is actually pretty small. With countless news stories and PSAs about how the Dark Web is a big, scary ‘dark’ place, it turns out that these sites make up less than 0.005 percent of the web pages on the Internet. This percentage equates to about 100 active live criminal sites. I think the ‘scariest’ takeaway for me is that the Dark Web isn’t the only thing we should be concerned with. Criminals are happy to operate in plain sight, not just in the Dark Web—another reason for us to be ever diligent when it comes to our digital identities.

And finally, AI, ML, and RPA are security terms that seem to be everywhere these days and often seem to be used interchangeably (and not always correctly). In our CEO Mark McClain’s latest article in The CEO Magazine, he breaks down all of these security terms and their implications. For anyone in the technology, security, or identity sphere, it’s a great read. As Mark says, “success for modern business comes from the symbiotic relationship of technology and human knowledge.”

Until next week, stay secure!


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