Both sides of the coin: more digitization, greater risk of leaks
For Bart, it was the perfect job: for the 18-year-old, known among his peers for his intellectuality and affinity with the fine arts, working in one of the biggest museums in his country was pure fun. His daily life was based on dealing with paintings, sculptures, and very rare books whose conservation demanded great care. What he would not have guessed was that cybercriminals were also eyeing the museum's valuable catalog, whose publications could be worth a lot of money on the Internet.
Once the institution finished scanning the literary works, cybercriminals hacked into its systems — which had a very weak cybersecurity infrastructure — and leaked the digitized versions for free, causing the museum incalculable damage. The incident angered the establishment's management but, above all, it frustrated the young Bart, who deeply understood the importance of literary works to society and could not accept this disrespect for the arts he admired so much.
It was then that he realized something very important: while preserving information in its original form is an important task, the world is undergoing a digital transformation and everything is being digitized. Our mission now is to protect this information in the virtual environment, and that means declaring war against cybercrime. That's what Bart did — and thanks to his curiosity and cleverness, he was quickly recruited by Hackers Rangers and started using his talent to prevent similar incidents from happening.
With great transformations...
Telling Bart's story reminds us of an episode that occurred in April, 2020, in the midst of the new coronavirus (SARS-CoV2) pandemic. One of the world's largest digital book distribution platforms had its software — used by more than 37,000 publishers around the world — hacked by cybercriminals to steal an undisclosed amount of literary works. The attackers used legitimate company customer accounts (probably protected by weak passwords) to “clean up” the catalogs, which included productions not yet released on the market.
The digitization of information is, in fact, a trend all over the world, and is beneficial to companies and government institutions. Several surveys have shown that companies waste a lot of time on printed documents, whether creating them, maintaining them, or finding a report filed years ago — with everything in the digital environment, such operations are much easier and even cheaper. Furthermore, once virtualized, documents are immune to physical threats such as fire, floods, and natural deterioration by the action of time.
On the other hand, we need to be properly prepared for the new threats that arise with digitization — the secure storage of information (especially on cloud servers, which are commonly misconfigured and lead to leaks), the correct configuration of access privileges and, of course, the awareness of those who process this data. We're talking about a trend that has more strengths than weaknesses; however, the weaknesses need to be addressed with great care and a strategy.
Nothing replaces the human factor
Across this ecosystem, security software is important, but educating collaborators about digital threats is even more crucial. A weak password or the inability to recognize a phishing email can be enough to put an entire corporate environment at risk. When fully aware, users become the front line in fighting cybercrime, helping make the web a much safer place.
Learn more about Bart
Bart is a creative, intellectual, observant, and proactive 18-year-old boy. He loves classical music and chess. In his spare time, he plays the violin. Bart hates lack of responsibility, criticism, and is also not very fond of football.
— "Thinking is easy. Acting is difficult. Acting according to what we think is the greatest difficulty of all."
(Bart, Hacker Rangers)
