How to Communicate Threat Intelligence to Executives

1. How to communicate Threat Intelligence to Executives
Threat intelligence communication is very key in ensuring that proper measures have been taken
before attacks occur. Discovering threats is one thing and propagating the threat to the relevant
executive for proper measures to be taken is totally a different thing. This involves making the
threat actionable for the targeted business. The communication under discussion is vertical in
most cases, whereby the issue is escalated to higher authorities up to the executives that make the
necessary decisions.
The most crucial thing in communicating the threat efficiently and effectively is to do a
comprehensive analysis of the business under the risk. Analysis may involve a close scrutiny of
the operations and transactions of the business both internally and externally. It evaluates the
security measures and mitigations that the business has put in place to compact any potential
threat. (Franolich, 2017 )
After an evaluation, any business executive desire a solution rather than a problem. Therefore,
for a better communication of any threat, a breakdown of possible solutions must be outlined and
suggested to counter attack the identified threat. A demonstration of the vulnerabilities and weak
points that attackers can use to gain access to the system is a useful step to win executive trust in
the intelligence that one is putting across. Moreover, a demonstration of the solution to combat
the problem at hand should be suggested.
By showing the executives the consequences attached to threats as well as explaining the
solution towards it can convince them to take action to the identified threat.

2. Cybercrime in social media grows at an alarming rate
The number of social media platforms have increased at a very high speed considering the
increase in innovations and inventions all over the world. These platforms host very many people
that interconnect on a daily basis through messages, chats and mails. However, these networks
many vulnerabilities and weakness that hackers can use to penetrate into and perform malicious
operations.
With the number increasing up to 70% increase in six months, recorded Cybercrime events are
one click away on the internet. Malicious individuals take advantage of these social media
platforms because they are free, easy-to-use, and offer a global reach (Bleau, 2016). They
launch fake accounts and website of well-known domain names such as Google, Amazon,
Alibaba, etc. to redirect online users to malicious web contents including pornographic sites.
In the recent past, many fake accounts of popular individuals have attracted many
unknowledgeable internet users to follow them which lead them to presumably official accounts’
contents. The increase has been majorly influenced by the need of the every device and every
person on the whole globe to interconnect and share resources. Fundraising accounts that are
created on social media platforms have been intercepted and the credit details altered to redirect
the raise funds to anonymous personnel.
The “internet community” are face with the challenge to innovate security mechanisms to
identify and expose any Cybercrime attacks. Every online user has a responsibility to be vigilant
and observe preventive measures that doesn’t expose them or their data to hackers. Moreover,
social media platforms have a role to enforce security procedures to protect their user’s data from
being accessed by malicious individuals.

3. Cyber Body Language
Cyber Body Language or “Digital Body Language” is similar to facial expression or behavior a
user makes when interacting in the cyber world. Cyber Body Language is best understood as
“Context-Awareness” where a device or software is designed, primarily or partly, to analyze the
behavior or pattern of the users and apply information gathered to automatically assert products,
services, or other purposes such as security monitoring (ZUHRI, 2017). With the increasing
number of internet users who spend a lot of time online, there has been a demand to understand
and identify users by the websites they visit, the web applications they use, the posts and
comments they make in social media platforms.
The comprehensive ability of cyber body language involves first being aware of the context an
online user is in. This involves understanding the provided device or the use application in order
to gather and synthesize the context information. Gathering the user’s behavior online is
achieved by having context awareness systems which analyze and record the user’s operations in
that particular context. A successful context awareness system is achieved by scrutinizing the
posts that users send to social media platforms including images and videos. Similarly, a series
of comments and emotional ‘emojis’ attaches a particular contextual event to a certain reaction
by a certain user.
However, understanding cyber body language by applying context awareness system has been
subjected to the breach of user’s privacy. This is considered as collecting personal information
without the consent of the users. The collected data on the other hand has been suspected to be
sold out to organizations that advertise to users according to the intelligent statistics made by the
context awareness systems.

4. Biometrics are the future of security
Authentication is one of the core pillars of security enforcement. It describes the process of
verifying that they are the one who they say they are. There are many implemented mechanisms
to authenticate use to systems and applications. These procedures have proven to be inefficient to
novices and vulnerable to malicious programs that brute force into the safeguarded application or
register key logging activities to get personal information of users.
The most common implemented authentication system is the username and password (UNP)
model. This model registers a user to a system which in-turn logs in a user through matching
username and password. Unfortunately, this model has forced online users to reuse their
credentials which increase their vulnerability to malicious attacks. Two-factor authentication
models have proven a more secure solution but has a drawback for its failure to provide a
suitable user experience.
The engagement of biometrics of voice recognition systems and fingerprint scans have provided
a more secure solution to authentication problem which is less vulnerable to hacks and more
convenient to all levels of users. The implementable biometric authentication system is
considerably simplified and highly accelerated to access systems with ease. Biometrics are
arguably the future to securing any basic products in the future, whereby any personal
information and credit card information will be linked to personnel biometrics to grant them
access to social amenities.
When these fields are mastered, biometric-powered multifactor authentication will finally unify
the age-old opposing forces of convenience and security, and a brilliant and incredibly secure
end-user experience will be established (Team2, Digital ID – Biometrics are the key to
marrying security and convenience, 2017).