by Doug Kreitzberg | Mar 26, 2021 | Coronavirus, Cyber Awareness, Misinformation
We’ve written before about how the disruption and confusion of the COVID-19 pandemic has caused an uptick in phishing and disinformation campaigns. Yet, there is another dimension to this that is just beginning to become clear: how the isolation of remote work helps to create the conditions necessary for disinformation to take root.
In a report on the impacts of remote and hybrid work on employees, Microsoft highlights how remote work has shrunk our networks. Despite the ability to use video services like Zoom and Microsoft Teams to collaborate with others across the globe, the data reveals that remote work has actually caused us to consolidate our interactions to just those we work closely with, and far less with our extend networks. The result is that employees and teams have become siloed, creating a sort of echo chamber in which new and diverse perspectives are lost. According to Dr. Nancy Baym, Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft, when are networks shrink, “it’s harder for new ideas to get in and groupthink becomes a serious possibility.”
The gap between interactions with our close network and our distant network created by remote work doesn’t just stifle innovation, it’s also what creates the conditions necessary for disinformation to thrive. When we are only exposed to information and perspectives that are familiar to us, it becomes harder and harder to question what we are being presented. If, for example, we are in a network of people who all believe Elvis is still alive, without exposure to other people who think Elvis in fact isn’t alive we would probably just assume there isn’t any reason to question what those around us are telling us.
The point is, without actively immersing ourselves within networks with differing perspectives, it becomes difficult to exercise our critical thinking abilities and make informed decisions about the validity of the information we are seeing. Remote and hybrid work is likely going to stick around long after the pandemic is over, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t steps we can take to ensure we don’t remained siloed within our shrunken networks. In order to combat disinformation within these shrunken networks we can:
1. Play the Contrarian
When being presented with new information, one of the most important ways to ensure we don’t blindly accept something that may not be true is to play the contrarian and take up the opposite point of view. You may ultimately find that the opposite perspective doesn’t make sense, but will help you take a step back from what you are being shown and give you the chance to recognize there may be more to the story than what you are seeing.
2. Engage Others
It may seem obvious, but engaging with opinions and perspectives that are different than what we are accustomed to is essential to breaking free of the type of groupthink that disinformation thrives on. It can also be a lot harder than it sounds. The online media ecosystem isn’t designed to show you a wide range of perspectives. Instead, it’s up to us to take the time to research other points of view and actively seek out others who see things differently.
3. Do a Stress Test
Once you have a better sense of the diversity of perspectives on any given topic, you’re now in a position to use your own critical thinking skills to evaluate what you — and not those around you — think is true. Taking in all sides of an issue, you can then apply a stress test in which you try to disprove each point of view. Which ever perspective seems to hold up the best or is hardest to challenge will give you a good base to make an informed decision about what you think is most legitimate.
From our personal lives to the office, searching for opposite and conflicting perspectives will help build resilience against the effects of disinformation. It can also even help to be more effective at spotting phish and social media campaigns. By looking past the tactics designed to trick us into clicking on a link or giving away information, and taking a few seconds to take a breathe, examine what we are looking at, and stress test the information we are being shown, we can be a lot more confident in our ability to tell the difference between phish and phriend.
by Doug Kreitzberg | Nov 19, 2020 | Artificial Intelligence, Coronavirus, Disinformation, Human Factor, Misinformation, Reputation, social engineering, Social Media
By now, most everyone has heard about the threat of misinformation within our political system. At this point, fake news is old news. However, this doesn’t mean the threat is any less dangerous. In fact, over the last few years misinformation has spread beyond the political world and into the private sector. From a fake news story claiming that Coca-Cola was recalling Dasani water because of a deadly parasite in the bottles, to false reports that an Xbox killed a teenager, more and more businesses are facing online misinformation about their brands, damaging the reputations and financial stability of their organizations. While businesses may not think to take misinformation attacks into account when evaluating the cyber threat landscape, it’s more and more clear misinformation should be a primary concern for organizations. Just as businesses are beginning to understand the importance of being cyber-resilient, organizations need to also have policies in place to stay misinformation-resilient. This means organization need to start taking both a proactive and a reactive stance towards future misinformation attacks.
Perhaps the method of disinformation we are all most familiar with is the use of social media to quickly spread false or sensationalized information about a person or brand. However, there are a number of different guises disinformation can take. Fraudulent domains, for example, can be used to impersonate companies in order to misrepresent brands. Attackers also create copy cat sites that look like your website, but actually contain malware that visitors download when the visit the site. Inside personnel can weaponize digital tools to settle scores or hurt the company’s reputation — the water-cooler rumor mill now can now play out in very public and spreadable online spaces. And finally, attackers can create doctored videos called deep fakes that can create convincing videos of public figures saying things on camera they never actually said. You’ve probably seen deepfakes of politicians like Barak Obama or Nancy Pelosi, but these videos can also be used to impersonate business leadership that are shared online or circulated among staff.
With all of the different ways misinformation attacks can be used against businesses, its clear organizations need to be prepared to stay resilient in the face of any misinformation that appears. Here are 5 steps all organizations should take to build and maintain a misinformation-resilient business:
1. Monitor Social Media and Domains
Employees across various departments of your organization should be constantly keeping their ear to the ground by closely monitoring for any strange or unusual activity by and about your brand. Your marketing and social media team should be regularly keeping an eye on any chatter online about the brand and evaluate the veracity of claims being made, where they originate, and how widespread is the information is being shared.
At the same time, your IT department should be continuously looking for new domains that mention or closely resemble your brand. It’s common for scammers to create domains that impersonate brands in order to spread false information, phish for private information, or just seed confusion. The frequency of domain spoofing has sky-rocketed this year, as bad actors take advantage of the panic and confusion surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. When it comes to spotting deepfakes, your IT team should invest in software that can detect whether images and recordings have been altered
Across all departments, your organization needs to keep an eye out for any potential misinformation attacks. Departments also need to be in regular communication with each other and with business leadership to evaluate the scope and severity of threats as soon as they appear.
2. Know When You Are Most Vulnerable
Often, scammers behind misinformation attacks are opportunists. They look for big news stories, moments of transition, or when investors will be keep a close eye on an organization in order to create attacks with the biggest impact. Broadcom’s shares plummeted after a fake memorandum from the US Department of Defense claimed an acquisition the company was about to make posed a threat to national security. Organization’s need to stay vigilant for moments that scammer can take advantage of, and prepare a response to any potential attack that could arise.
3. Create and Test a Response Plan
We’ve talked a lot about the importance of having a cybersecurity incident response plan, and the same rule is true for responding to misinformation. Just as with a cybersecurity attack, you shouldn’t wait to figure out a response until after attack has happened. Instead, organizations need to form a team from various levels within the company and create a detailed plan of how to respond to a misinformation campaign before it actually happens. Teams should know what resources will be needed to respond, who internally and externally needs to be notified of the incident, and which team members will respond to which aspect of the incident.
It’s also important to not just create a plan, but to test it as well. Running periodic simulations of a disinformation attack will not only help your team practice their response, but can also show you what areas of the response aren’t working, what wasn’t considered in the initial plan, and what needs to change to make sure your organization’s response runs like clock work when a real attack hits. Depending on the organization, it may make sense to include disinformation attacks within the cybersecurity response plan or to create a new plan and team specifically for disinformation.
4. Train Your Employees
Employees throughout the organizations should also be trained to understand the risks disinformation can pose to the business, and how to effectively spot and report any instances they may come across. Employees need to learn how to question images and videos they see, just as they should be wary links in an email They should be trained on how to quickly respond internally to disinformation originated from other insiders like disgruntled employees, and key personnel need to be trained on how to quickly respond to disinformation in the broader digital space.
5. Act Fast
Putting all of the above steps in place will enable organizations to take swift action again disinformation campaigns. Fake news spreads fast, so an organizations need to act just as quickly. From putting your response plan in motion, to communicating with your social media follow and stake-holders, to contacting social media platforms to have the disinformation content removed all need to happen quickly for your organization to stay ahead of the attack.
It may make sense to think of cybersecurity and misinformation as two completely separate issues, but more and more businesses are finding out that the two are closely intertwined. Phishing attacks rely on disinformation tactics, and fake news uses technical sophistications to make their content more convincing and harder to detect. In order to stay resilient to misinformation, businesses need to incorporate these issues into larger conversations about cybersecurity across all levels and departments of the organization. Preparing now and having a response plan in place can make all the difference in maintaining your business’s reputation when false information about your brand starts making the rounds online.
