Blogs

It is that time of the season — and no, please don’t cue the holiday music just yet — for making “predictions” for 2021. Yes, time to look in the crystal ball. And following last week’s blog looking at SIA’s top 10 security megatrands for 2021, I thought it was fitting to look at the International Data Corporation’s predictions, which, not surprisingly, have cloud as the top trend for 2021. The timing of this list made me smile because just this...

It is fitting the Security Industry Association (SIA) released its Security Megatrends list on the opening day, Oct. 21, of Securing New Ground (SNG), its annual conference that brings together the industry’s best to talk about current “trends” that are shaping the industry. It is also that great time of the year where we celebrate the accomplishments of industry’s brightest stars with three security legends — Denis Hébert, Min Kyriannis and Andrew Lanning —...

We here at Security Systems News were very excited to sponsor a highly successful golf outing that was recently held to benefit families in need and The New York Firefighters Burn Center Foundation Children’s Camp. Mission 500’s successful event brought security professionals out for a day of golf that benefited families in need as well as helped The New York Firefighters Burn Center Foundation Children’s Camp support those children badly injured in fires. The charity golf...

If you have been paying attention to the headlines and the many bans on facial recognition that have popped up over the past year, new survey results — showing that 68 percent of Americans believe facial recognition technology can make society safer — are certainly encouraging. Leading independent polling firm Schoen Cooperman Research recently conducted a nationwide poll on Americans’ views of facial recognition technology. The survey of 1,000 adults found that most Americans...

As the editor of a security-focused publication, you would think that I have acquired some skills in spotting a scam, and not just on the cybersecurity side, because what happened to me was equally as well-coordinated and diabolical as any cyber attack I have ever seen. Sooooo … this past Monday morning I got a call from what appeared to be Central Maine Power (CMP), the electric company here in Maine, telling me that my power was scheduled to be turned off that day unless I made a payment....

We live in a time when people are up in hypothetical (and sometimes real) arms about protecting their privacy. The hot topic and nearly constant debate of facial recognition … the fact that almost everyone has a smartphone with video and camera at their fingertips … video cameras placed across our cities … and while I appreciate these technologies, there is something coming that I’m not too sure about: Project Aria. Facebook recently unveiled this, labeling it a new...

I joke sometimes in my house that the best way to communicate with my teenage son is to do a Snapchat video call with him, even when he is in the same house, although I have come to realize that I am too old to even fathom, let alone use, Snapchat. Luckily, the app designers were smart enough to make it so someone like me isn’t even capable of interacting with it, which is why my son — and all teenagers — love the app so much. But I digress! What I am getting to is this virtual...

If you’ve been reading any of my blogs as of late, you’ll know that cybersecurity has been my main focus and for good reason. With more and more of us working from home — approximately 4.7 million in the U.S. — cybercriminals are cleaning up, wreaking havoc on individual’s lives and businesses alike. In fact, IBM’s “Cost of a Data Breach Report” pegs the average cost of a security breach at $3.92 million. However, people across the world are fighting...

Systems integrators, security consultants, manufacturers all want the same thing — to truly understand not only what their customers “want,” but also what solutions, technology and services they truly “need” to help solve their specific problems, and meet their specific requirements. Now more than ever that need to be what many in the industry are calling a “trusted partner” is more critically important than ever, which is why new research on end user...

Jumping into the nitty-gritty of the six most popular cyberattacks used against U.S. companies, in which cyberattacks shot up 93 percent over the past 12 months, I engaged the help of cybersecurity expert, Rodney Thayer, convergence engineer at Smithee Solutions LLC. Let’s explore what each of the six attacks are and what you can do to help prevent them. But, first, a little about Thayer … “I was a software developer building communications protocols; therefore, I was doing...