Alan W. Silberberg

Global Cybersecurity and Reputation

Alan W. Silberberg
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We live in a hyper-connected world that brings the globe to you; and you and your family to the globe at equally fast speeds. While on one hand, any one of us can access the internet, through any number of tools, platforms, technology and software and almost any combination too. But on the other hand the internet can and does access us, and all of our information, every minute of every day. Probably more than you and your family access the internet.

One thing that is growing in need and in reality is the international and cross cultural aspects of Cybersecurity. For example, businesses and governments alike in the US and in Israel face similar challenges within similar robust telecom and economic environments. 15 years ago the idea of US and Israeli Cybersecurity companies working together seemed remote or exotic. Speak to anyone in Cybersecurity, and it won’t take long for the Israeli Cybersecurity community to come up. True for Venture Capital in Israel too.

Dr. Orit Mossinson, a Venture Capitalist + founder of DalaiVC – A VC firm that specializes in Cybersecurity – had this to say: “Bringing Israeli Cybersecurity companies through capitalization to becoming the leading edge of how to combat cyberwar efforts, is just beginning. Over the next few years there is going to be massive growth in this unique space.”

My company Digijaks is constantly working with businesses and governments on Cybersecurity. What applies to big business or governments applies to people and families mostly too. That is true in the USA, Israel, UK, Canada, Japan, Singapore, etc,  or any nation considered 1st world with full internet access.

Within as long as it takes to blink an eye, you or your family can get caught up in a Cybersecurity breach leading to a Reputation and search breach. It does not take much, and is not the sole domain of big companies being targeted. Ask yourself, do you have wifi? Is it secure? Do you have devices? Run a business? Pay taxes? Do Online Banking? Any of the above could be the entry into your life by a hacker.

This might sound hard to believe in the era of downloadable feature films in a few seconds and the huge amounts of data coming “down” the “pipes” to our devices. But for every bit of data coming in; we are pouring it right back through apps, games, web browsing, file uploading, liking, tweeting, sharing, and videos and not to mention the IoT — as in your tweeting fridge and internet sharing toaster. Don’t even get started on the lack of cybersecurity for IoT globally. Because there is none. Or very little of note.

There just is not any in most of those devices or apps yet. Don’t kid yourself or mistakenly think you or your families are not being monitored and watched through the IoT. The more devices you have connected, the scale of magnitude of potential monitoring and watching is exponential.

Several years ago the digital exhaust of the average first world person with access to the internet was less than 1000 data points per person roughly. Now scale upwards and it is closer to 20,000 data points per person in their digital exhaust. How many companies are tracking these, and or reselling them to other groups? How many governments? How many hacking groups? Extortionists? Kidnappers? Digital Money Robbers?

When we get invited to address groups about Cybersecurity, they always want to know about their specific devices. Is this safe? Is that dangerous? Cybersecurity is one part hardened data, encrypted data and secure data transport. It is also one part human. Increasingly so, with socially engineered attacks such as phishing and drive by malware hosted on social media or in apps. The human element is about training employees, about families working with each other to be private and safe online and is about the fact that humans will and can get tricked by their own emotions and desires. This is what makes social engineered attacks so pernicious.

They are not about weak data points or lack of encryption. They are about our human frailty and how it gets exploited by digital tormenters.

Think about it. What if a Stuxnet-like custom designed cyber war tool; were to take out all the SCADA devices in a particular city? Or take out a particular industry like oil and gas or electrical generation; or at 50 hospitals at once? The problem is every unsecured SCADA device is also listed in multiple places to be publicly found on the internet, not even the dark web. 7 million + devices, terminals, industrial control centers, power plants, factories, utility grids and transportation and information networks are to be found just by searching.

Bring the best of the best together and create new environments in which they can work together to stop a global scourge of cybersecurity breaches and the resultant reputation and search breaches that follow every attack.  True in the USA and true in Israel. The world is looking at the very beginnings of a 3rd World War. This one is invisible mostly, harms people in real life sometimes, yet is being conducted by numerous countries, companies, and criminals all at once against each other. Now is the time to start combining the best of the best and the brightest.

Cyber Reputation Management and Control From Digijaks

Alan W. Silberberg

Cyber Reputation Management and Control From Digijaks

BAM!

There it is.

Right in your face one morning when you check your social feed as news.

That nasty little something that someone, a bot, or a person, or maybe both left for you overnight. It is a digital take down. A bad blog post. A social media meme that is being unanswered or purposely pumped up to discredit you, your company or organization or your brand. Or maybe it is a false allegation. Or paid fake bad reviews that your competitors put up.

Face it. The Internet is a hostile place for your reputation and your brand, whether that is personal, corporate or government. The control and management of your reputation start and end with you. As we enter 2015, it is worth paying attention to, in fact it is important to take stock of your online reputation, the management of it and the control of it. It is yours. Not anyone else.

The — Internet, social media, the cloud, mobility, bring your own device, artificial intelligence, autonomous computing etc etc — all are really cool buzz words. All come with prices to pay that include the constant need for personal, corporate and government level cyber security, reputation management and reputation control.

Our top 10 List of Ways That Cyber Security, Social Media and Reputation Management and Reputation Control all mesh together.

  1. Social Media — is the entrance point for viruses, malware, malformed links, phishing and learning enough about someone to turn around and destroy their reputation.
  2. Mobility — allows for instant access to social media, email, sms, cloud and phone, and video, as ways to tear down a brand or reputation. It can happen anywhere, at any time, by anyone around you holding a smartphone or smart watch or smart glasses.
  3. Cloud — allows people to store information quickly and easily. This can be for phishing, for cyber crime, for reputation destroying or extortion. Images and videos, poems and documents and your complete online profile can be easily harvested by smart people and or bots and then turned around against you. What information are you allowing out or putting out to make it easier to be attacked? Or easier to have your reputation tarnished or that of your brand?
  4. Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) — While fun and easy for users and your employees BYOD brings a whole fruit basket worth of cyber security and reputation management and control issues along with it. BYOD allows users and employees to access the internet and social media channels without approval or notice from the employer. A reputation can be destroyed in an instant with a recorded conversation, a video, an errant email or sms, or worse corporate espionage and cyber crimes can be instituted easily with BYOD.
  5. Artificial Intelligence — The name alone. What does it mean? How can artificial intelligence (AI) bots or autonomous computing affect your cyber security and reputation management and control? In so many ways we are just beginning to understand.
  6. Lazy People — Sorry but many times the malware or the phishing or the destruction of reputation starts with someone simply being lazy, not having security and privacy settings attended to, and or worse letting someone else use their login credentials.
  7. Your Competition — They have access to the same tools you do. They can buy hackers, they can buy reputation destruction; they can attempt to steal your trade secrets; they will try to insert bad people into your organization at every level. (See 8 below.)
  8. Bad People — No good, no ethos or morals. These people do not care if they harm you. They seek to. These come in the form of social media contacts or email phishing all the way through HR, interviewing, shadowy financiers and content theft propagators from online goods. They will use any and every tool out there to disrupt your business, to destroy your reputation.
  9. Posting stupid pictures of yourself — on to any website regardless of how safe you *THINK* it is.
  10. Not checking the health and welfare of your own digital reputation and brand.

Copyright © 2010-2014 Digijaks, LLC

Recap of Gov20LA 2014.

Alan W. Silberberg

By Alan W. Silberberg, Founder of Gov20LA

https://storify.com/ideagov/gov20la-2014-recap-by-founder-alan-w-silberberg
As the founder of Gov20LA —  looking back at the 5th Annual Gov20LA Open Government Conference in 2014; I can’t help but to express humbleness and gratitude to the brilliant people who spoke, and those who interacted with us from around the world on Twitter. For the 5th year in a row, I come away so impressed with the hard working, innovative people who present their knowledge to you.

We heard from such amazing people, and will be releasing videos with their presentations in mid-2014. Topics ranging from Privacy and Internet Security to Mapping, Veracity of Comments and how Social Media is used in Emergencies, to a roadmap for social engagement. Each speaker took us on an exploration of the mind blowing mixture of technology, government, people and ideas. With in-depth deep dives about real world examples, with interactions from Twitter from around the world and questioning from the audience – each speaker opened a whole world of discussions.

Gov20LA had participation in both our live-stream and on twitter from over 10 countries. Thousands of people were engaged with the small conference on the beach. Every year we have participation and engagement from public figures in multiple countries at the Federal, State and Local levels and foreign equivalents. We hear back from many of these agencies later in the year and many of the lessons and technology discussed at each Gov20LA becomes the basis for training materials for other governments as we have kept all our videos of speakers free and easy to access.

U.S. Federal Agencies have been long engaged with Gov20LA, we would like to thank the State Department, NASA, DATA.GOV, The White House, The Defense Department, Small Business Administration, Commerce Department; and others for lending their brilliant people to speak. Foreign Countries like Great Britain, Canada, Israel, and their representatives have been great speakers and guests, we deeply appreciate the interactions and engagements with all the above. It speaks volumes about the success of this event, and the results globally.

When governments can use technology openly to engage their citizens in a transparent dialogue that is genuinely two way, we all see massive changes happen. When budgets and records are open, and easily accessible by the people, suddenly light is cast upon the darkness. What was chaotic and possibly corrupt can now be viewed by all. This makes each one of us powerful. Add that to the phone you carry around in your pocket and how it multiplies and magnifies your messages instantly, globally. As I said in my opening remarks; we all carry around in our pockets the power to create change. The decision is up to us whether we do so, and how we act on that.

This conference has been a project of mine since 2009, when I was running You2Gov. Every year we have had a 50/50 split between men and women speakers. In 2014 we made the speaker ratio over 3:2 in favor of women over men. There are very few other conferences who can state the same or something close. I challenge other tech founders, conferences and the media to start addressing the gap that usually exists at conferences. There are so many brilliant women who are founders, who have created world changing technologies, hold patents on intellectual property or run organizations that are changing how our world works. There is no excuse any more in 2014 or later years not to be making every conference 50/50 at least.

Thank you to everyone who has worked tirelessly behind the scenes to make the event a success, year after year. Thank you to everyone around the world for the interaction through various forms on the Internet.