Category: Anti-Corruption

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#panamapapers + Reputation Control + Cyber Security

Reputation Control and Reputation Management
Cyber Security, Social Media, You.

The Panama Papers as released this past week are a really huge data dump, in fact one much larger in scale than that of Wikileaks, and the largest to date in history.

The project that resulted in this massive public disclosure, was essentially a cyber security lapse leading to a breach.  Following the breach, data exfiltration was executed through leveraging a long known critical failure in the operating system and email servers that were used by the law firm, Mossack Fonseca.

Not only are the Panama Papers a stunning example of a hack that resulted in massive  data exfiltration; thus consequently leading to a global reputation breach. But they are also representative of a slow to change cyber security environment in law firms, corporations and organizations globally.

Drupal, a widely used language for databases and other programs has been constantly been providing critical updates since it’s inception. Users of Drupal have to make the choice to keep their systems up to date, or as in this case, not.

The utter lack of cyber security protocols like updating a server, or dealing with over 25 issued critical updates to the operating system/servers bring to mind other major hacks like the Target Corporation hack where 60,000 alerts were ignored by corporate IT staff. This is the opposite of what cyber security protocols would dictate.

Law firm IT staff need to be amongst the first to adopt these basics; but often times are not, and many international law firms have mediocre to poor network security. In that area, the Panama Papers could be any law firm, anywhere. The reputation loss suffered by the cyber security lapse and breach could be any law firm’s clients, anywhere.

Digijaks has been working with clients for years to address the undeniable link between cyber security and reputation control. The Panama Papers simply serve as one more reason why these issues are so connected and so important to both people and organizations.

 

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Cyber Reputation Management and Control

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 © 2010-2015 Digijaks, LLC

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What the Hack of the US Government Means to You.

As the CEO of a cyber security and reputation company, I have to admit to not being surprised by the recent successful hacking and penetration of the US Government.

While the scope of the recent events is most definitely shocking, myself and others have been researching, writing about it and trying to push and pull officials to focus on the whole set of threats, not just the known ones, and not just the data hardening ones.

This recent set of hacking and penetration successes were definitely done by a Nation State, China in most probability. But guess what?

The intrusion was apparently found by a Vendor doing a sales pitch to the US Government, and not by the billions of dollars of hardened equipment or custom platforms designed to stop cyber attacks.

I am not being critical. Nor attempting to assign blame. It is what it is. Millions of Americans who work for or have worked for the US Government, myself included have been hacked. Not just hacked, but all of our secrets may soon be on public display or for sale or other.

In the past few years, US consumers have been the targets of hacks from any number of companies that were breached, from Target and Home Depot to Equifax and Anthem among the biggies. But the reality is most companies have probably been hacked.

Most small to medium business do not have the sophistication or the resources to put in place strong cyber defenses. Even for the ones that do, that does not mean a successful defense.

What it means for you:
1. We are all vulnerable. Do not think your information is safe.
2. Disconnect computers from the internet when not using them, and power them down. Same for devices like tablets or phones or other internet connected devices.
3. Create a backup hard drive, find an encryption program you can easily use, and create an encrypted back up of your life.
4. Maybe your whole world does not to be interconnected. Maybe the smart home is not so smart in light of the potential privacy and security vulnerabilities presented by the inter-connect.
5. Take steps to protect private information. Get a safe deposit box at a bank, put all original documents in it, plus a copy of them.
6. Try to make air gaps between your information. Keep your financial records in one secure place. Your medical records in another, different secure place.
7. Be aware that your life may well be not private at all.
8. You are not alone, in fact maybe your whole country is right in the same situation.

In 2013, at my Gov20LA event we hold annually, I made some remarks about the need for families around the world to adopt encryption techniques to protect their information and themselves. That message was partially intended for families trying to fight against tyranny abroad; but is also a critical message for all of us now.

Bottom line though is that the world has changed. *A lot.*

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Correlation of Wealth and Reputation Management

Wealth.

We all want it, work for it and strive for it throughout lives and careers.

Reputation.

We all have one. It us up to us to define it, scale it and defend it.

Which one is more valuable? Which one brings more of the other?

This is a two sided question. To some people, money is everything. To others, their reputation is everything, with money or without. While most people might reflexively think that money is more important, others will emphatically state that reputation management is paramount.

Some recent studies weigh in on the side of reputation. Reputation expert Michael Fertik recently weighed in on the issue in the UK’s Guardian Paper.

Digijaks CEO Alan W. Silberberg feels that money and reputation are completely intertwined; and that this effectively goes along with the associated correlation between social media and reputation management.

Money and Reputation are intertwined in ways most of us can barely recognize yet. Pretty soon, if not already, major banks are/will be assessing their clients not just based on assets under control, but on social indicators, and online reputation.

How many times have people searched you during or before routine financial meetings? Have you thought about this yet? 2015 definitely marks the year in which most of us need to start recognizing the distinct correlation between money and reputation — whether online or offline.