One of the more interesting, even if more scary presentations was on Data Security by David Ostertag, Global Investigations Response, Verizon.  He presented the results of their latest Data Breach Report http://verizonenterprise.com/DBIR/2015.

I can’t go over any meaningful amount of the facts.  But here are a few to scare you:

• 23% of respondents open phishing messages (I get on average more than one of these each day!)
• 11% of respondents click on email attachments from unknown sources

I just can’t comprehend that so people are still so gullible!  The Verizon report should be enough to scare into any IS executive into training their employees!

The Verizon report was followed by a Cyber Security Panel.  As Daniel Thomas from Telus pointed out, there is just so much personal data available from LinkedIn and Facebook that many (most?) people are in serious danger of having their personal information stolen.  Please think about what you post!

Also on the Cyber Security Panel was Vivek Khindria from Bell.  He talked about the security threat companies face to the sensitive information stored on their servers from hackers.  He estimated that of the 500-1000 major companies in Canada, perhaps 50% of the in-house skills to help them devise a plan to keep the bad guys out.  So where does that  leave the SMBs?