{"id":66613,"date":"2017-12-08T18:55:48","date_gmt":"2017-12-08T10:55:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/social-engineering-the-next-era-of-cybersecurity\/"},"modified":"2017-12-08T18:55:48","modified_gmt":"2017-12-08T10:55:48","slug":"social-engineering-the-next-era-of-cybersecurity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/social-engineering-the-next-era-of-cybersecurity\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Engineering: The Next Era of Cybersecurity"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n<p>Satellite communications technology has reached a \u201czero delta position,\u201d says <strong>Envistacom\u2019s<\/strong> Vice President of Business Operations Nelson Santini. According to Santini, the industry has matured to a point where the key differentiators in the future will be new social engineering practices, as well as how satcom manufacturers embed security in the design process from inception, rather than as a bolt-on addition.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn the world of satcom, if I show you a one-line diagram of an Earth station in the 1970s and one today, the similarities are going to be astounding. What\u2019s changing is how people access that network,\u201d Santini explained in an interview with <em>Via Satellite<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Two or three decades ago, the biggest hurdle for satellite companies was ensuring they could establish communications in a place where there was no infrastructure. \u201cNow we have that down to a science,\u201d Santini said. \u201cThe next logical step is, how do we take this technology and make it secure so we can control who has access to the information? It\u2019s taking it to another level.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On the hardware side, Santini pointed to the emergence of \u201cappliances\u201d that are used to validate the identities of those communicating over remote links, such as facial recognition, fingerprint scans and iris validation. Coincidentally, many of these transmit information over satellite terminals, and Santini predicts that it won\u2019t be long before the same technologies are used to validate who\u2019s using the terminal itself. This will become particularly prominent in tactical comms for military and\/or government operations, which have stringent cybersecurity requirements. \u201cThe way that I see it, in a couple of years if not within the immediate future, those technologies that are used as appliances will be a part of the inherent design of the terminal,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>According to Santini, one can think about cybersecurity in terms of layers or a pyramid. Satcom manufacturers spend incalculable amounts of time and money developing proprietary algorithms to manage the information that goes through their satellite network. These different waveform modulations are the most basic layer of security, followed by the conditional access encryption that safeguards the message itself. At the very top is where social engineering comes in, he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWho was the person that sent me that message? Does that person have the authority to send me that message and, on my end, who can see it and who can decrypt it?\u201d Santini said. If someone is on a merchant vessel or a U.S. submarine, for example, they want to be able to verify that a transmission is authentic, particularly one that indicates a change of protocol, such as a change of course or port call. \u201cYou can validate that through conditional access encryption and decryption, and at the level of biometrics,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>According to Santini, all parties within the satellite supply chain must carry the responsibility of ensuring communications are secure, from the product manufacturers to the system integrators. \u201cSystems integrators have to take [cybersecurity] seriously because if they knowingly put one of those devices that\u2019s vulnerable into that link and something happens, they could become liable. So it\u2019s their responsibility now to understand the equipment and how it\u2019s secure,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>When asked if there was one technology in particular that worried him, he asserted that it is folly to focus on just one threat. \u201cWe have to keep a good 360-degree view of all the technology out there and understand that the axes of threat change hourly, if not by the minute. That\u2019s no exaggeration,\u201d he said. \u201cBecause there are so many threat vectors, focusing on one is somewhat myopic.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He drew an analogy to the response of airport security officials following the shoe bomb attempt in 2001. The hypervigilance around that specific threat has now led us to routinely taking off our shoes to be scanned at the airport. \u201cImagine what would\u2019ve happened if we had explosive pants,\u201d Santini said. \u201cThe fact is the threat vectors are changing faster than we can proactively defend from them. We have to have an alert posture.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Satellite communications technology has reached a \u201czero delta position,\u201d says Envistacom\u2019s Vice President of Business Operations Nelson Santini. According to Santini, the industry has matured to a point where the key differentiators in the future will be new social engineering practices, as well as how satcom manufacturers embed security in the design process from inception, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":66615,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66613"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}