Opening keynote speech at the Seattle Electrical Conference

Navigating and traveling through an airport can be stressful. Trying to get through security while searching for a boarding pass and assessing whether there’s enough time to jump on that long line for a desperately needed cup of coffee is a universal experience. With all of that juggling going on, the last thing on your mind are the cybersecurity threats that you might encounter at the airport along the way. Luckily, cybersecurity experts have already put into place a variety of technologies to protect us and keep our cyber lives safe while we travel. So take a deep breath and focus on getting to your seat in a timely manner instead.

“Organizations should focus first on protecting heartbeat user identities with strong identity governance, multifactor authentication and privileged command escalation roles,” says Kayne McGladrey (@kaynemcgladrey), director of information security services at Integral Partners.“Nonheartbeat users, such as service accounts and shared accounts, require protection levels that include vaulting and automatic password rotation, on a defined schedule.”

Phishing is the lowest cost way for a threat actor to gain access to an organization’s network and assets, according to Kayne McGladrey, an IEEE member and director of Security and IT at Pensar Development. “While it might be fashionable to worry about the latest zero-day, or shadowy nation-state threat actors developing crippling remote exploits, the fact is that it’s cheaper to ask users for their passwords.”

The fact that nearly a billion people had their personal information exposed in November 2018 “has further helped threat actors to develop more compelling and targeted phishing content,’’ McGladrey adds.