While China, unsurprisingly, denies involvement in hacking (China Denies Hacks, Points Finger at U.S), the business focus should be on dealing with the impacts of successful hacks – not only on your own websites and networks, but also on those of your key suppliers. Yes, your supply chain is one obvious area of concern – as should be any key infrastructure service providers, particularly if they’re cloud-based (‘The Cloud’ Challenges Amazon).
Attacks, over the last week, on Apple, Twitter and Facebook (Eastern European gang hacked Apple, Facebook, Twitter), point at the need to consider hacking as a threat to marketing and communications channels. If social media is a key part of your marketing mix and is suddenly unavailable, what will you do? If your Twitter account is taken over by a malefactor who broadcasts that you’ve been taken over by a competitor (Burger King Twitter account ‘hacked’ with McDonald’s logo), how will you deal with that?
Increasingly, as cyber resilience becomes a business imperative, issues like these will need to be part of the thinking of both security and business continuity professionals.
