Earlier this week, John McAfee’s perspective on national technical matters was published here.  We had a lot of comments come in on that interesting story.

Next, we continue with our Cybersecurity prediction series on a number of topics with John McAfee, Founder of McAfee Associates.

The threat of State-sponsored attacks, Privacy and Apps

SiliconANGLE: What do you think are the biggest cybersecurity threats to business?  How does 2014 look?

John McAfee:  Next year – The Chinese are going to finally break out and become a very serious global concern.  The focus will come back to that.  It shifted under all this attention to everything else that has been going on, but it will be back in a big way.

Privacy will continue to be a big concern.  Just look, it’s been verified that they have been placing hardware that can connect to any open Wi-Fi and turn on the microphone on your personal device.  Many applications openly state that they are going access cameras, microphones and more yet the public blindly accepts these conditions.  There was a story about how Bank of America’s application when you accept terms/conditions that they will turn on cam when they choose without notification and have complete access to your phone.  The purpose makes business sense for them, but the cost to the individual is extreme.  They do it so that if someone were to have an account and empty it, then later claim they didn’t do it, the bank has location info and possibly microphone and camera images as well to say it was you. That’s frightening.  The public will have to wrestle with apps and issues like this in the year to come as awareness of privacy issues and security become more well-known.  How we choose apps, run apps – those will be a big focus.

Security improvements are needed

SA: Do we have enough technology and personnel to meet all of these security threats right now?

McAfee: Again we have to look at leadership and the things going on in the government.  There’s not enough to go around right now.  And we still have government technology projects that are having some real issues, including security.  Does congress have the knowledge to deal with these issues?  No.  There’s a whole lot of disconnected people there.  We live in a world where the subtleties of communications is over their heads.  They depend on lobbyists to inform them of realities of technology.  They explain it in a way that is highly biased.  This is not about nerve, it is about a radically different world than where they grew up in.  That’s a big lesson for the industry at large because you have to look outside your bubble and that goes especially for security.

SA:  What can be done to improve security – as an industry and within say – a large company?

McAfee: A big shift needs to take place.  Mainly because there isn’t enough to go around.  So we turn to great products, great services to fill that gap and a good amount of thought leadership.  The technology needs to move on too.  There’s this mentality of endpoint security that is really tied to legacy constructs.  The threats are much more evolved than that so strategies have to be as dynamic to meet that.  We hear all about APT, malware and all these different kinds of threats and unfortunately this clouds our minds with this delusion that we can rely solely on technology to protect us.  It neglects or at the very least diminishes the human factor.  It’s relevant in every threat from flaws in coding, flaws in procedure – Who is the break?  Will it come from some secretary or the guy who has access to all the files in your company?  You see it doesn’t really matter how secure you THINK you are, the big threats don’t come from some massive security flaw.  This is the real higher order and no one is really doing it.

As an industry stories need to be put out there.  Like the story about a real life person that brought down a company because somebody broke, clicked on something, brought in an app.  We shouldn’t deceive ourselves into thinking security can just magically be attained once you reach a certain point or buy so much hardware.  We need people to understand the reality of life, full of deception and bring about a different type of education on this topic.   The conversation needs to be far deeper in an enterprise that has things to protect.  Perhaps even psychologists and behavior specialists will need to be involved in this process, from human resources to training.  The board room needs to have the composure and psychological movement to change the scope and that’s where a company’s weakest link could very well be – in that very board room.  Spending needs to shift to multi-layer strategic security purposes and that includes the human element.  Vigilance just won’t happen fast enough without those priorities.

We’ll wrap up McAfee’s predictions next with a little bit of discussion on the NSA, John’s thoughts on Obamacare, and a preview of McAfee’s answer to a bunch of these issues, Future Tense.

photo credit: CPOA via photopin cc