Showing posts with label cyber warfare. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cyber warfare. Show all posts

Microsoft Report: Cyber-Influence Attacks Undermine Our Well-being

I work on the Future of Business team at TCS.  As part of our routine we track hundreds of emerging trends across seven domains; science, technology, societal, economic, geopolitical, philosophy and environment.  Our future is guaranteed to be influenced by a mixture of converging developments across all of these areas, with an occasional catalyst (historic transformational event), thrown in to super change them.  One of those catalyst was the COVID-19 pandemic that has killed millions and changed the way the world works, educates, lives, etc.

The COVID-19 pandemic taught us many things. It taught us that ingenuity, expertise, governments, science and very smart and hardworking humans all collaborating together can deliver lifesaving vaccines in record times.  This is how Science.org describes it, "Amid the staggering amount of suffering and death during this historic pandemic of COVID-19, a remarkable success story stands out. The development of several highly efficacious vaccines against a previously unknown viral pathogen, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), in less than 1 year from the identification of the virus is unprecedented in the history of vaccinology. (Source: Science.org)

As amazing as this story is, powerful foreign and domestic special interest groups influenced huge numbers of people to believe the opposite.  These special interest groups convinced hundreds of millions of people to believe the life saving vaccines were instead part of nefarious conspiracies designed to harm them.

As a futurist studying trends and emerging developments that could greatly benefit humanity in the areas of health, longevity, food abundance, an end to many chronic diseases, sustainability and many others, I wonder how many of these benefits and life saving developments will fall victim to politically motivated  groups employing cyber-influence campaigns against them.  These groups have already demonstrated an ability to create alternative realities in our minds where good becomes bad, and bad becomes good.

This week Microsoft released a report updating the world on Russia's cyber warfare against the Ukraine and Western nations.  This report includes the latest research conducted by Microsoft’s threat intelligence and data science teams. The report details sophisticated and widespread Russian foreign influence operations being used among other things, to undermine Western unity. Microsoft reported they are seeing foreign influence operations enacted in force in a coordinated fashion along with the full range of cyber destructive and espionage campaigns in Ukraine.  

One important section of Microsoft's report says, "These ongoing Russian operations build on recent sophisticated efforts to spread false COVID narratives in multiple Western countries. These included state-sponsored cyber-influence operations in 2021 that sought to discourage vaccine adoption through English-language internet reports while simultaneously encouraging vaccine usage through Russian-language sites. During the last six months, similar Russian cyber influence operations sought to help inflame public opposition to COVID-19 policies in New Zealand and Canada.  

We (Microsoft) are concerned that many current Russian cyber influence operations currently go for months without proper detection, analysis, or public reporting. This increasingly impacts a wide range of important institutions in both the public and private sectors." 

That was Microsoft being concerned.  I am concerned.  It is critical that we educate ourselves, our elders and our youth to recognize these destruction attacks and understand how these cyber-influence attacks work to influence and harm our societies' thinking.  Without being able to recognize and defend against these kind of mind-attacks, these alternative realities, scientist and entrepreneurs can develop the most useful and beneficial innovations that save lives and improve humanity's well-being, only to fall victim again to foreign and domestic cyber-influence campaigns that convince us to reject a better future.  

************************************************************************
Kevin Benedict
Partner | Futurist at TCS
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Watching Information Operations in Real-Time

This week Microsoft published a paper called Special Report: Ukraine.  In it, they reveal Russia's cyberattacks on the Ukraine and detail the strategies Russia is employing, and what they have been doing to combat it.  I can't imagine that the team of coffee drinking, rain soaked programmers in Seattle expected to find themselves in the middle of a war.  Heroes and nerds come in all different sizes and sometimes they are one and the same.

At the beginning of the report, Microsoft shares how Russians view information warfare, “Confrontation in the information space with the goal of causing damage to critical information systems, undermining political, economic, and social systems, psychologically manipulating the public to destabilize the state and coerce the state to make decisions to benefit the adversary party”, according to public Defense Ministry documents.  Additional comments by Russian officials suggest they view information operations as a means to degrade troop morale, discredit the leadership, and undermine the military and economic potential of the enemy via information [operations], which can at times be more effective than traditional weapons. 

Marketing Insights and the Battle Against Cyber Evil with Vasu Jakkal, CMO, FireEye

Vasu Jakkal, CMO of FireEye, shares her insights from the frontlines of the battle against cyber villains, and also her experiences and strategies marketing the solutions and services developed to protect democracy and the global digital economy.

br /> ************************************************************************
Kevin Benedict
SVP Strategy, Regalix Inc.
Online TV Channel RegalixTV
Website Regalix Inc.
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobile Cyber Security News Weekly - Week of December 7, 2014

Welcome to the Mobile Cyber Security News Weekly, our newest online newsletter. Mobile Cyber Security will focus on the most interesting news, articles and links related to mobile and cyber security, mobile malware, mobile application management, cyber warfare (and more!) that I run across each week.  I am specifically targeting market trend information.

Also read Connected Globe News Weekly
Also read Field Mobility News Weekly
Also read Mobile Commerce News Weekly
Also read Mobile Health News Weekly
Also read Mobility News Weekly

Looking for an enterprise mobility solution?  Read the Mobile Solution Directory Here!

New security measures by Apple have reduced phone theft by as much as 40 percent, a study from the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has shown. Read Original Content

Mobile device security software market is forecast by Infonetics Research to increase at a 25 percent compound annual growth rate topping $4 billion by 2018. Read Original Content

Analysts at Research and Markets forecast the global BYOD security market to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 35.23 percent over the period 2014-2019. Read Original Content

B2M Solutions’ mobile software delivers valuable insight and actionable analytics for enterprise customers. Business leaders and managers within the mission critical, rugged mobile enterprise now have operational views of key business and technology analytics affecting performance and productivity. B2M software is developed with specific functionality to help organizations identify and unblock mobility problems as soon as, or even before, they occur, allowing customers to sustain critical business processes and gain competitive advantages. To Lean more visit www.B2M-Solutions.com.  This newsletter is sponsored in part by B2M Solutions

Financial-services companies plan to bolster their cyber security budgets by about $2 billion over the next two years, according to accounting and consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. Read Original Content

A particularly nasty mobile malware campaign targeting Android users has hit between four million and 4.5 million Americans since January of 2013, according to an estimate by Lookout, a San Francisco mobile security company. Read Original Content


In the recent Mobile Cyber Threats report from Kaspersky Lab and INTERPOL, it was revealed that Android is by far the biggest target for mobile malware. Because of the huge Android user base and being an open platform, malware designed for Android has the greatest odds of success and easy to exploit as well. Read Original Content

Blackberry has announced a security partnership with Samsung aimed at bolstering the encryption on the firm’s Android smartphones. Read Original Content

MasterCard has revealed plans to make use of biometric information to replace passwords required for online payments, harnessing technologies such as Apple’s TouchID fingerprint scanner found on iPhones and iPads. Read Original Content

Latest Articles on http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com

The Internet of My Things and How It Works

Mobile Expert Interviews: B2M's CEO Julie Purves
Mobile Apps, Sensor Platforms, Code Halos and Consumer Behaviors
Digital: Big Vision, Small Action
Amplified Influence and Mobile Apps
Feeling Thankful - Is there an App for That?
Gamification Strategies and Mobile Applications - The Way it Should Be
2015 Enterprise Mobility Events Announced
Insights into the Impact of Big Data, Mobile Apps and Code Halos Strategies on Retail

Whitepapers of Note

Don't Get SMACked - How Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud are Reshaping the Enterprise
Making BYOD Work for Your Organization

************************************************************************
Kevin Benedict
Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst
Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant
View my profile on LinkedIn
Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies
***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobile Cyber Security News Weekly – Week of November 23, 2014

Welcome to the Mobile Cyber Security News Weekly, our newest online newsletter. Mobile Cyber Security will focus on the most interesting news, articles and links related to mobile and cyber security, mobile malware, mobile application management, cyber warfare (and more!) that I run across each week.  I am specifically targeting market trend information.

Also read Connected Globe News Weekly
Also read Field Mobility News Weekly
Also read Mobile Commerce News Weekly
Also read Mobile Health News Weekly
Also read Mobility News Weekly

Looking for an enterprise mobility solution?  Read the Mobile Solution Directory Here!

New ABI Research data has forecast global cyber security spending will reach $100 billion by 2020 as governments intensify efforts to protect their financial, energy and defense infrastructures against a constantly evolving threat landscape. Read Original Content

Starting next year, enterprise organizations will be able to secure their mobile communications with a new offering from unlikely partners: BlackBerry Limited and Samsung. BlackBerry executives announced the partnership, along with several other new products and services, during the company's Enterprise Portfolio Launch on Thursday in San Francisco. Read Original Content

More than 40 percent of UK businesses have suffered a security breach from work mobile phones in the past 12 months, according to BT, which has warned companies are not taking the dangers of smartphones seriously enough. Read Original Content

B2M Solutions’ mobile software delivers valuable insight and actionable analytics for enterprise customers. Business leaders and managers within the mission critical, rugged mobile enterprise now have operational views of key business and technology analytics affecting performance and productivity. B2M software is developed with specific functionality to help organizations identify and unblock mobility problems as soon as, or even before, they occur, allowing customers to sustain critical business processes and gain competitive advantages. To Lean more visit www.B2M-Solutions.com.  This newsletter is sponsored in part by B2M Solutions

According to Research and Markets, the global BYOD security market is set to grow at a combined annual growth rate of 35.23 percent over the period 2014-2019. Read Original Content

Around 95 percent of IT and security professionals are struggling with the security threat presented by BYOD and more than 80 percent expect the number of mobile security incidents their company suffers to grow in 2015. Read Original Content

Cyber security is predicted to be the fastest growing homeland security market as North America, Asia and Europe invest in cyber defenses, according to the new report, The Homeland Security Market Forecast 2014-2024, published by ASDReports. Read Original Content

According to Research and Markets, the BFSI security market is expected to grow from $21.53 billion in 2014 to $37.35 billion by 2019, at an estimated compound annual growth rate of 11.6 percent from 2014 to 2019. Read Original Content

According to a report by The Homeland Security Research Corporation, following a remarkable 23 percent annual market growth, the 2015 market will reach $9.5 billion, making the U.S. financial services cyber security market the largest non-government cyber security market. Read Original Content

Latest Articles on http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com

Gamification Strategies and Mobile Applications - The Way it Should Be
2015 Enterprise Mobility Events Announced
Insights into the Impact of Big Data, Mobile Apps and Code Halos Strategies on Retail
Transforming Web Content for Enterprise Mobility
Mobile Expert Interviews: Snappii's CEO Alex Bakman
Mobile Expert Interviews: Red Hat's Mike Piech
Big Data Business Models and Code Halo Strategies with SmartStory's CEO Michael Boerner
Digital Transformation Expert Interviews: SmartStory's Lloyd Mahaffey

Webinars of Note (recorded)


Virtualization ≠ Mobilization


Whitepapers of Note


A Comparison of the StarMobile MORPH Protocol vs. Traditional Remote Computing Protocols

Don't Get SMACked - How Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud are Reshaping the Enterprise
Making BYOD Work for Your Organization

************************************************************************
Kevin Benedict
Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst
Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant
View my profile on LinkedIn
Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies
Recommended Strategy Book Code Halos
Recommended iPad App Code Halos for iPads

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Interviews with Kevin Benedict