Hi All
Thank you for your continued participation in 2020, a year, most of us want to forget. But remember that Pandemics are nothing new to mankind. Take for example the Black Death over 75 Million to 200 Million people lost their lives between 1346–1353, which at the time was considered to be spread by Rats off ships from abroad. However, recently in London 25 bodies were discovered from this era, and subsequently DNA testing was conducted on the deceased teeth. It was discovered that the Black Death is as potent as it was at that time, but some interesting insights turned up. Today, the Black Death was spread by household carers, coming to give support to the families affected, which then spreads through these carers who had no protections whatsoever. These days, it would result in Pneumonia which as we know these days we have the ability to protect or cause the human body to repair itself. But at the time of the Black Death there were food shortages, so the immunity system of many of those affected was already depleted.
Pandemics are not new, they will happen again beyond our own existence, we must learn to be resilient, and be prepared to not only depend on technology, but understand the actually implications of that technology. We all want protection, the magic bullet which will protect human live. However, we have to be prepared that new strains of something else will appear, even if it is a rogue meteor from outer space. We live in fragile times, and we know that State nations have been planning focused attacks, and along with it there is an expectation that a cyber attack will be launched every 11 seconds. Now that the CEO of Solarwinds is leaving, despite previously focusing on profit before resilience of the organisations, has many organisations wondering whether they have been compromised. The answer is simple, if you are unsure, burn it down and start afresh, that we you know exactly the state of your systems.
2021 promises to be a hot bed, which means we cannot carry on doing the things we did in 2020, we have to think differently, act differently and focus on where the data resides, its value, the intrinsic risks and how to ensure that users, only have access to permitted data, via approved applications, networks and devices only.
We need orchestration and complete visibility second by second with a well honed Incident Response Team ready to go into action to protect and limit the effects of the expected attacks within organisations.
Good Luck in 2021.
Regards
President of the New Zealand Auckland Chapter
Happy New Year
