East of England branch City of London Police Cyber Griffin Webinars

CICM East of England Branch committee member Steve Walsh of RSM Creditor Solutions hosted these two thought-provoking webinars on cyber crime, introducing Matthew Eccles of the City of London Police's Cyber Griffin team. The Baseline Briefing webinars gave delegates key actionable advice they needed to secure themselves against the most prolific cyber attacks in use today.

Matt stressed that your data is a currency and should be treated with great caution and not given away lightly. We tend to over share, giving away our valuable data on sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook without questioning whether it is necessary. People forget that what you put online is a digital footprint following you for life.

Also discussed was the balance of privacy, convenience, and security. Attackers commonly target our emails (phishing) and increasingly our SMS (smishing) as well as employing malicious QR codes (quishing) to further obfuscate their attacks. As such, our account security is vital. Some of the key takeaways to keeping safe online are; use 2-step verification (2SV) whenever possible, setup a password manager to create and protect long, unique passphrases, install a VPN on your devices to secure your connection, keep devices and apps updated and change default passwords.

Matt also introduced how artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the security landscape and demonstrated deepfakes and voice cloning. He explained that AI is both creating new attack vectors such as these but also being used to enrich older known attacks like phishing. He also emphasised that data entered into the likes of ChatGPT or Google Gemini is immediately in the public domain.

Cyber security goes hand-in-hand with physical security. Matt stressed not allowing tailgating,  always challenging unaccompanied strangers in the workplace, keeping doors locked, using screen protectors, and never using unknown devices or cables.

Matt closed with answering several questions, after which Steve Walsh passed on the grateful thanks of the Branch and all who listened. This report covers just some of the valuable information from Matt's two comprehensive webinars on cyber crime and how to prevent it.