Actiance’s social media and compliance specialist Joanna Belbey is also a filmmaker at heart. She recently completed a 7-minute passion piece, The Threat of Cybercrime, to push out concerns on how hackers can get to the best of us. Shot for a class, Belbey has nonetheless riveted financial services executives with her student assignment to show how cybercrime affects an entire network.
“I attended trade show where I heard a lot about malware and how fraudsters can gain access to enterprises through social media. People are very public on social media, and fraudsters create email called ‘spear fishing’ that looks authentic because they know a lot about you. On social media, because we’re a tribe and agreed to connect with each other, we trust each other. It’s almost naive and then people tend to click on links through social media and that offers up as a risk for malware to come into organization.
I just thought that was fascinating and the more I talked to people the more frightening it got. Banks and securities firms are natural targets because that’s where the money is. It’s not emotional. It’s about money. Also there are hacktivist organizations who want to create embarrassment and bring websites down. There are also state-sponsored cyber criminal activities where you have countries trying to hack into firms and steal their information. If a cyber criminal wants to get into an organization, they probably will.
You get victimized twice—once by the cyber criminal and then again in public. It’s difficult for firms to share when they’ve been hacked. So I wanted to provide a quick overview of some of the risks and ways to protect an enterprise.
When I showed it in a meeting with executives from insurance firms, there was a shocked silence. Initially they said, ‘This isn’t our problem.’ The reaction is, ‘This is data and IT’s problem.’ Yes, those two groups are on the front lines. But really this is corporate wide.”