Comms providers receive plenty of criticism when they fail to protect the public from harm, but the odds are against them when they come under attack by a hostile nation state. Networks and the services provided using networks are soft targets for governments and cyber forces that engage in espionage or seek to disrupt foreign enemies. The problem of protecting comms providers from nation states is exacerbated by the near impossibility of obtaining any redress. Providing comfort to the public is also challenging, and placing blame is complicated by nation states employing hacker groups that also engage in freelance crime. This was the main theme of yesterday’s episode of The Communications Risk Show, with special guest Patrick Donegan of Hardenstance, one of the most respected authorities on the business of telecoms and IT security.
There are so many risks that comms providers need to deal with that it can be difficult to cover all the news in each of our weekly shows. Yesterday’s show also included chat about the imprisonment of the multimillionaire head of a UK call spoofing outfit and the discovery that many phones are shipped to users with malware already installed. And if risk managers did not have enough to worry about, will massive job cuts by comms providers leave them with fewer resources to address increasingly complicated risks?
The Communications Risk Show streams live every Wednesday at 4pm UK time, but there are just two more live shows in this season! We will return with a second season later this year, for 15 consecutive Wednesdays from August 23 to November 29. Make sure you do not forget by subscribing to our livestream schedule and having the details of every program and every guest updated in your diary automatically. But if you miss a live webcast then you can always catch up with the video recording or the audio podcast soon after each show has finished. The recording of yesterday’s show can also be played below.