Category: Security Advisory Blog

Cygnus Coronavirus

Operation CYGNUS – Was the UK’s Coronavirus response a failure based in assumption…?

So much has been discussed about the Tier One Command Post Pandemic planning exercise of 2016. For those who haven’t been part of the discussion, the Public Health England, on behalf of the Department of Health delivered a pandemic planning exercise between 18 to 20 October 2016. The exercise was primarily aimed at assessing high-level…
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Application Security

Application Security – Zoom is a Knife Crime!

The news ebbs and flows and so too do people’s attitudes to the world around them. We are all influenced by the media. Take knife crime. In 2019, knife crime was a significant problem in London. So we should ban knives! Knives are dangerous! Knives should not be used under any circumstances. Why are you…
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Shopping Trolley

Morrisons NOT vicariously liable for employee data protection breach says UK Supreme Court

Firstly – This is legal information of general interest and does not constitute legal advice of any kind. On April 1, 2020, the UK Supreme Court today handed down their judgement in the case of WM Morrisons Supermarkets plc (Appellant) v Various Claimants (Respondent), case UKSC 2018/0213. The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Morrisons were not…
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Coronavirus

Coronavirus Load balancing – Understand it can’t be stopped. We’re just smoothing the peaks in demand.

Similar to the way your IT teams will be trying very hard to load balance the impact of all your extra remote working VPN connections, the government is trying to load balance the impact on the health service and the economy…keep calm and read on!

calculating risk

Calculating Risk – Where’s your Confidence?!

When helping organisations navigate risk management Fox Red Risk is often faced with the task of determining methods for calculating risk. We prefer to use tried and tested methodologies but what we often find is that organisations, very rarely, are calculating risk properly. A key thing missing from the majority of implementation we see is…
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virtual BCM - Fox Red Risk

Virtual CISO – Dispelling the Myths!

The virtual CISO or virtual Chief Information Security Officer is a relatively new concept and with that comes a few misunderstandings of what the client actually gets (i.e. solid cybersecurity protection for your business). The word “virtual” probably doesn’t do us any favours but let’s look at some of the more common misconceptions about a…
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Cybersecurity Skills Gap

Cybersecurity Skills Gap – Who is doing the teaching…and who should provide the funding?

It seems like every other day there is yet another article highlighting the impending apocalypse of the cybersecurity skills gap. The articles often moan that it is the fault of the employer for wanting qualified personal (who knew) and then try to solve the problem essentially with the advice: Why not hire someone who wants…
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asset discovery

Asset Discovery for Cybersecurity & Data Protection – You can’t protect it if you don’t know it exists!

There is an old management adage that what isn’t measured isn’t managed. It’s so true. Something similar applies to cybersecurity. If you don’t know an asset exists, how on earth can you protect that asset from a cyber-attack or data breach?! Asset Discovery is the number one exercise a new CISO (or Virtual CISO) should…
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processor contract

Processor Contract – How Processors can inadvertently become Controllers…and why it matters!

For those of you who deal with the wonderful document that is a processor contract. Whether you’re on the Controller side or the Processor side, you will know there are quite a few hoops to jump through. This is because GDPR strengthened the requirements of a Controller-Processor relationship, outlined in Article 28. That said, a…
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GDPR Subject Access

GDPR Subject Access – why verifying ID can be dangerous!

I wrote a few weeks ago discussing how DSAR volumes may have gone up in your organisation and that it’s probably not simply down to the GDPR Subject Access hurdles being lowered for Data Subjects. Since GDPR came into force in May 2018, Data Subjects now don’t have to pay a fee (in most cases).…
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