Is cybercrime really the greatest threat to national security, over terrorism? Well, according to Former White House chief information officer Theresa Payton, the answer is a resounding ‘yes’. Speaking at the Edge2016 Security Conference on Tuesday, Oct. 18, Payton who served in the White House from 2006-08, said "everything is hackable, and a breech is inevitable. Should we just give up? Absolutely not."
But Payton was not underplaying the dangers of terrorism, in fact she believes the two are interlinked. "Guess how terrorists are funding themselves," Payton asked the 300 attendees, “through cybercrime."
In order to effectively protect themselves from a cyber breach, Payton gave business leader two tasks to complete: identify their company's two most critical assets and practice digital disasters.
"Employees need to be able to do their job, which is take care of the customer," Payton said. "What you have to do is make it really simple for them to take care of your customer and take care of your assets. To do that, you say, 'These are our top two most critical assets.' If you make it everything, it's too onerous. It's too hard, and in an effort to get their job done, they’ll work around security protocols, not because they want to put you at risk, but they want to do a good job. So you have to make it simple and create that rallying point."
Payton also stated that 95% of cyber-attacks are only made possible because of human error and that 78% of breaches are made possible because of social engineering tactics. "Make social engineering a team sport (when practicing digital disasters)," she said. "The team where nobody falls prey to social engineering gets a pizza party or some kind of reward. It creates healthy, fun competition."
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