Comments on: Is it just me, or is the Caribbean beginning to take cybercrime and cybersecurity more seriously?

By: Omowale Elson

Omowale Elson — Tue, 05 Nov 2013 02:06:40 +0000

Michele, I think there are several reasons and one being that we might have assisted in its demise by not being proactive in updating the site, which was 7-years-old. When you consider that about 30,000 sites are hacked a day, mostly small businesses like mine (Forbes.com), there isn’t much flying under the radar that can be accomplished if you don’t conduct due diligence. You would think that a communication company would know that, so much for the paradox. My first thought, still is, was that progressive companies are identified to be stymied because there are coming on the radar of their competitors. Well that reasoning is great for the ego, even though it has solid validity. You see, we have included the Website development into our resilience framework that includes a futuristic mapping. We now have a highly skilled IT developer certified in security codes, making us much more robust than our previous operation, but we also feel privilege to have her on-going technical support because the cybercriminals are getting smarter in distributing their viruses via e-mail and software. We are all in a communication network so the responsibility is on each of us to be smarter too. Thank you for your question.

By: Sean Slattery

Sean Slattery — Mon, 04 Nov 2013 17:09:58 +0000

I disagree that Caribbean as a whole is taking the topic seriously.

Cyber threats/attacks/risk are bubbling to the top of the news but that is just raising awareness of the issue. With my customers across the Caribbean basin, organizations that are heavily regulated and must comply with compliance frameworks are generally in a better position to deal with cyber risk. However, compliance does not equal security.

The expectation that a single vendor or product is going to solve all of our problems is an issue with the businesses. That is akin to saying that because we have police, we do not have any crime. The public and private sectors need to recognize that no one is going to solve the problem on their own. No one has seen all the threats. No one has all the experience in the world. You are never the smartest person in the room.

You are only as effective as your least capable unit. If your unit only has experiencing dealing with one location or type of threat, how can you possibly hope to cope with the dynamic nature of the Internet and contantly evolving threats. The Caribbean needs a security comminity spanning countries, industries and most importantly having ties with other geographies e.g. the Americas, EMEA, APAC. The idea that an island nation can be completely self sufficient in a global economy quite simply a farce.

By: Michele Marius

Michele Marius — Sat, 02 Nov 2013 19:28:17 +0000

In reply to Omowale Elson.

Thanks Omowale. I do agree that the password for most policy makers might indeed be “votes”, and it might be the key to unlock the support necessary to really get the issues addressed.

On a separate note, I was wondering whether you have any idea why your website was hacked?

So many of us still believe that our websites and online presence are under the radar. However the likely truth is that we are being monitored more than we think…

By: Michele Marius

Michele Marius — Sat, 02 Nov 2013 19:16:52 +0000

In reply to Sachin Ganpat. Lol, Sachin. I kinda have to agree with you. There are those who are diligent and really want us to progress with respect to cybercrime and cybersecurity, and those who, for whatever reason, are not as supportive of the efforts needed...

By: Omowale Elson

Omowale Elson — Thu, 31 Oct 2013 14:51:06 +0000

Hi Michele, as usual, you presented a very thoughtful perspective on a critical ITC issue facing the Caribbean. I was attempting not to say critical because it seems that we are always in a critical condition, even when we intend not to be. But I’m using critical not to mean disparaging, but something that requires thoughtful analysis, like your blog intended. What caught my eye first in the blog was the sign post, and my immediate response was, yes! This captures the key terms associated with cyber security. For rice and peas, my company’s website was hacked badly recently and we are now redesigning it to be more robust, while making it more immediate to our stakeholders. With our knowledge of the vagaries of the Web we should have been in a proactive mode for low level hackers, and this caused me to think whether there wasn’t something deeper, something hidden deep in the recesses of our mind about what it means to be vulnerable, and why this concern for vulnerability took precedence over what it means to be resilient. As a communication practitioner my association with “password” in the word group was that your question was right on point, “Is it me?” because I saw “crossword.” But password is quite appropriate here because we have not identified or presented policy makers with access to understand the urgency of these issues, so there is no shared meaning about what constitutes appropriate action to deal with cybersecurity and cybercrime. I suspect that these issues serve to drive people into traditional analog cocoons where they can moralize on why not to digitize our data and organizations so we can have greater access to information for strategic decision making in a timely manner. Unintentionally, you might have helped them. Visually, I think this blog in attempting to point out the gravity of the situation might used tapped into the social defenses of policy makers about youth and technology (video clip), which serve as a cover story for their “passworld, sorry about the pun.” So to be optimistic, we have to take small gains and push forward with relevant culturally sensitive strategies that would reduce the level of dissonance in the message. We have to select the right audiences for these mesages. I would like to take the opportunity to thank you and those small groups of persons — the champions — in the Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU), Carib Network Operators’ Group, and the Caribbean Cyber Security Center and international partners like the International telecommunications Union for this wonderful leadership you have undertaken. It’s not you alone, it’s us too. Oh, I just thought about a password can that activate elected officials, “VOTES.”

By: Sachin Ganpat

Sachin Ganpat — Wed, 30 Oct 2013 20:00:42 +0000

I think it’s just you. While I know that there are technocrats within the Government agencies who are serious and dedicated to cybersecurity legislation, it stops with the ones required to get that legislation to become law.

Even with the private sector, which is made up of many small businesses, they don’t take the cybersecurity risks seriously, or more accurately, as a priority.