Tag: ARTICLE

The worlds of financial crime and cybercrime are colliding, converging into one. The biggest threat to businesses globally is the new cyber-enabled financial crime. Yet businesses and even financial institutions tasked with protecting our money continue to fight this combined threat with multiple separate defense systems and multiple separate defense teams. The situation is like a military leader trying to fight different enemies on different fronts. While those enemies remain in different fronts, it makes sense to send separate defense forces against them, each focused on fighting only the enemy assigned to it. But what if those enemies merge and...

How would you picture those who work to prevent weapons of mass destruction (WMD) from falling into the wrong hands? Would you picture them heavily armed and with a military bearing? Then you might be surprised. Although such individuals sometimes fight the spread of WMD, the front lines feature a different type. The bulk of front-line defenders are less likely to have military backgrounds than financial ones. That’s because the most vulnerable place to identify and block those who spread WMD is through their financial dealings. So, we look at the world of sanctions violations and proliferation financing to see how...

Terrorist funding detection has been practiced the same way as money laundering detection ever since Counter Terrorism Funding (CTF) initiatives were added to Anti–Money Laundering (AML) efforts after 9/11. Although the two have similarities on the surface, a deeper look reveals more differences than similarities. In fact, some have rightly called terrorist funding “money laundering in reverse” because of marked differences in its sources and goals. Do the two warrant similar treatment in detection methods? Or do their dissimilarities call for different detection approaches? How are they similar? Money laundering and terrorist financing share three similarities: 1.    They involve a source of money or...

In what ways has financial crime hurt you? Most people would respond with a yawn. We might think it is limited to a few fraudulent schemes that deprive a small number of people of a few hundred or a few thousand dollars. While we might sympathize with victims of such schemes, we often fail to see how far-reaching financial crime is. The reality is that financial crime affects every one of us personally, as well as impacting whole economies. So, what is financial crime? What does it do to us? And what is being done to fight it? What is financial...

Modern theories of the firm remain focused on transaction costs, operational efficiency, employee motivation, leadership, strategy and other related factors. While any of these may support our success at various times, none of them alone will facilitate it in the long run. Even strategy, while vitally important, is set at a point in time and is vulnerable to change. The one factor that enables our company’s long-term viability is Enterprise Resilience which enables a company to adapt to a change. Technological Upheaval We are in an ever-shifting maelstrom of change. Climate change causes more frequent and intense natural disasters. Changing climate...

The attacker stepped out from behind a hedge in the upper-class suburban neighborhood, being careful to stay in the shadows. Across the street, the last lights shining through the windows of the house had just flickered out. She tugged the bottom of her black hoodie into place and pulled the hood up over her head, casting her face deeper in shadow. Her target sat in the driveway at the front of the house, a bright red and completely decked out SUV. Glancing up and down the street to ensure no one was looking, she slipped across the street into the...

IoT Wireless Protocols data rate and range comparison in a chart.

China and Russia share an information security doctrine, one that is significantly different from Euro-Atlantic doctrines. In the Chino-Russian model of information space a discussion about population zombification does happen and it fits squarely within the domain of information security. No, this is not an Onion article. China and Russia have significantly broader definitions of Information Security than US, UK and other mostly aligned Euro-Atlantic nations. Fundamentally different conceptual approaches to information security are behind ongoing failures to reach an agreement on cyber security issues between Euro-Atlantic nations on one side and China and Russia on the other. Despite the...

Don’t expect this to be either of the typical articles about diversity. I’m here not to fawn over its benefits nor to rant about who does or doesn’t get hired. I’m here, instead, to ask why we react to it in the baffling way we do, why it often accomplishes the exact opposite of its stated goals and what dramatic approaches we might take to make achieving its goals more realistic. Announce a round of diversity training, or of progress toward reaching diversity hiring goals, and one thing is guaranteed. Eye rolls and sarcastic comments among workers will abound behind...

Several comments in response to my recent competency-focused post led me to also consider the importance of curiosity in the workplace. Interestingly enough, recent experiences have given me a chance to see firsthand the benefits of nurturing curiosity and how to do so as part of the DNA of the work environment. Curiosity is a vital element in all aspects of innovation, yet is tightly confined by many companies to only certain stages of developing solutions. It’s a characteristic that all companies claim to value, but that many companies, in their actual culture, firmly suppress. Curiosity increases employees’ value to the company and...

Below is my attempt to list of all published 5G, IoT and "Smart Everything"-related security guidelines, frameworks and standards. If you are aware of additional entries that should be here, please let me know at [email protected]

We live in a world in which the way we observe and control it is radically changing. Increasingly, we interact with physical objects through the filter of what computational systems embedded in them tell us, and we adjust them based on what those systems relate. We do this on our phones, in our cars, in our homes, in our factories and, increasingly, in our cities. Physical objects are so interconnected that we simply take those connections for granted, as if being able to unlock your car by pushing a button on your key fob, unlocking it with your phone or...

We have to ask ourselves; at what point does an unexpected outcome via expert prediction justify a prison sentence? Minutes after I delivered cyber risk assessment results to my Italian client, I heard the news – six Italian scientists and a government official have been sentenced to six years in prison over statements they made prior to a 2009 earthquake that killed 309 in the town of L’Aquila in Italy. The offense? Manslaughter. This group was comprised of well-respected members of the National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risks which apparently the public had deemed as being able to...

“Cyber war” is a term that is in recent days used so liberally that people may often wonder if these words are as menacing as they sound or used only as a tool to incite fear as a way to control a society that increasingly depends on technology. How we prepare and respond to cyber attacks depends on whether we believe we are in cyber war. It influences how we estimate the risks, potential impacts, or insurance premiums. Preparation for and response to cyber war implies government involvement and that might mean handing over the control of our networks to...

Money laundering is a crime that many people consider irrelevant to them. If a problem at all, they consider it a problem only for banks. That is far from true. Money laundering has massive effects not only on financial institutions, but also on governments, industries, economies and all individuals. What are the effects of these widespread crimes that fly under the radar of much of the population? And why are these effects so massive? Understanding the economic cost It’s hard to pin down a dollar amount for what money laundering costs the global economy. Normal economic activity measurements can’t track funds generated...