Cyber Crisis

March 29, 2021
Cybersecurity attacks happen every minute of every day and people aren’t worried enough, warns Cole (Hacker Beware), former McAfee chief technology officer, in this sobering treatise. Despite the frequency of breaches, he writes, most people assume that they’ll never be targeted and that the applications they use are secure; neither is true. He urges readers to assume that cybertheft is happening and to put precautions in place to protect themselves, their family, and their business. He gives advice on how business owners can best ensure security, providing a list of questions an organization’s IT team needs to be able to answer (“is our critical data encrypted?”), urging businesses to ensure security teams are involved in contract-signing because “almost all contracts today involve data-storage security,” and outlining the dangers of cloud storage. On the individual level, Cole recommends individuals put pressure on their representatives to make cybersecurity a priority, as well as use two-factor authentication and keep hard copies of important documents. He captures, in layperson’s terms, the full extent of cybertheft going on, and convincingly drives home the uncomfortable but eye-opening fact that “you are a target.” Cole’s frank and urgent account hits as a necessary call to action. Agent: Nena Madonia Oshman, Dupree Miller & Assoc.