When is a hacker on your side? When they’re showing you the pitfalls of phishing attacks…
For most of us, our knowledge of how to stay safe online is sketchy at best. If we don’t open dodgy emails, don’t click on strange links, and vaguely attempt to keep our antivirus software up to date then we congratulate ourselves on doing well…
Cybersecurity attacks, however, are not a question of if but when. If a hacker really wants to target us, the odds are they will break through. Individuals can take comfort in the fact that they have safety in numbers, but large companies, organisations and public bodies are tempting targets for malicious actors, who can wreak devastating consequences.
Following their breakthrough show – The Secret Life Of Your Mobile Phone – at Disruption Summit 2017, Geoff White and Glenn Wilkinson will return to DSE 2019 with a live phishing demonstration. This will illuminate how – in spite of businesses’ best efforts – hackers still have an easy way into their systems…
An oldie but a goodie
Phishing is one of the most well known strategies in the world of cyber crime. If a person emails, calls or texts you pretending to be someone they’re not in an attempt to gain sensitive personal information, then they are carrying out a phishing attack.
In the early days of the internet, awareness of phishing amongst the general public was fairly low. Phishers could entice people to open fraudulent emails or part with their security details with minimal levels of effort.
But today, we’re fully wise to these kinds of tricks, right?
Not so, according to White, an investigative journalist, and Wilkinson – an ethical hacker. In spite of an ever increasing spending on and awareness of cybersecurity issues, organisations and individuals remain as vulnerable as ever to phishing attacks.
Live hacking in action
After hacking the audience’s phones in 2017, this year at Disruption Summit Europe White and Wilkinson will carry out a live and interactive phishing attack with attendees. They’ll be answering the question of what exactly phishing looked like in the corporate sphere in 2019. How do hackers trick their way into business networks, and what do they do when they get there?
We’ll discover that email inboxes remain a serious security concern for organisations, whose employees can all too easily hand over the keys to their computer systems without realising. During Wilkinson’s phishing attack, White will illuminate what kinds of details hackers are after when they target business networks, and where this information is likely to be sold. A laptop will also follow the experience of the victim as they undergo this cyber crime.
A technique that is both simple and sophisticated, phishing attacks are responsible for bringing down banks, power stations and even political parties in recent years. As with everything in the world of cybersecurity, awareness is the first step towards building a successful defence. Attend Disruption Summit this year and you’ll have a better idea of what’s going on in cybersecurity, as well as technology, disruptive innovation, the public sector – and more.
It’s going to be good.
