So you didn’t patch your iPhone today….and you read that there is a “Zero day threat” against your phone OS/apps….you feel vulnerable. OK.

So, this is then where I talk about blah blah blah but ultimately if I feel that person is genuinely scared (as I have often found many women to be…..especially very clever women), then I will ultimately end up talking about threat actors.

Treat actor is just a fancy technical name for ‘enemy’. I will make this short by stating there are three kinds of threat actors (in my head at least) – Government, Hackers and amateurs.

Government – means rogue governments. I ignore true democratic countries which for the most part try to use resources to protect against real national security treats. I live between the UK, Ireland and France and not one of these ‘home lands’ would ever be a treat to me. So government means that you should worry about this treat actor if you are person of influence or a politician. Then you should hire cybersecurity experts….like me. I may not protect them against advanced persistent threats for long but I would know which extra yard to go to have reasonable and fair security.

Hackers are a threat to all from the politician to the postman. All of us need to be sensible about updating devices and software and in trying to have strong secure unique passwords on all sites. However many hacker attacks are simply indiscriminate and your insecure webcam or password dump was simply happened upon by them.

Amateurs are basically those who are looking to tap their spouses phone, or a pupil trying to hack a teacher’s computer. Yes some can be serious as they can involve perverse men harassing women but these against are usually carried out by physical access to the hacked victims phone.

So what is the point to this? What I am trying to explain is that the majority of the public really do not understand a real cyber threat to them. Yes, all of us industry have to keep in mind that there is real cyberwar. There are real battles happening now in the world and the more we can encourage honest men and women into true jobs in the industry, the better for us all. I hate when I read about a scam on some person. I hate ransomware which causes so much disruption in this word. However when I say these words, I am reminded of how tempted I have been in the past to use any skills I have, to earn dishonest money ….by basically stealing it….that simple. This breaks a golden commandment….I just thank God I can see the stars tonight if I desire……honesty always leads to a freer mind.