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If You Connect It, Protect It: Cybersecurity Awareness Month Seminar, October 2020

Introduction

Volunteer State Community College held its annual Cybersecurity Awareness Month Seminar on October 21, 2020.  Cybersecurity Awareness Month is held in October each year.  It is meant to improve awareness about the importance of cybersecurity across the United States. Bringing awareness to cybersecurity issues helps guarantee that everyone across our Nation has the resources they need to be safe and secure online.  This year’s theme was “If You Connect It, Protect It”.

Due to the COVID-19 concerns, the Seminar was held for the first time as a virtual event. Presenters spoke on several topics regarding this year’s theme.  Topics ranged from Securing Devices at Home and Work, Internet of Things, to the Future of Connected Devices.  The participants were from various segments of Cyber Defense expertise: Special Agent, Kevin Varpness (Law Enforcement (FBI)), Stephen Penn (Healthcare (AdventHealth)), Dr. Manaak Gupta (Higher Education (TTU)), and Kevin Blankenship (Chief Information Officer, Volunteer State Community College).  Dr. Jerry Faulkner (President, Volunteer State Community College) delivered the welcome and shared some good information about connected devices and the various areas they are now found in society.

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Not only was there a range of presenters, but those in attendance ranged from college students, grade school students, educators, and staff.  These individuals were from many areas of Tennessee, as well as one school from Indiana.  This event could not have been a success without the presenters' hard work and the Business and Technology Committee.

Those in attendance were presented with how people are using the Internet to gather information about an individual.  Dr. Faulkner started us off with describing the various types of technology that we have in our homes that are connected to the Internet.  With these devices being connected to the Internet it is another opportunity for people to infiltrate our homes and businesses.  The attendees were presented with ways to secure their devices by keeping their antivirus software up to date, patching their computers to eliminate vulnerabilities, using data encryption, using a firewall, and using strong passwords.

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Kevin Varpness, FBI

Special Agent Kevin Varpness spoke about how the internet is being used in Child Trafficking.  He pointed out the fact that victims are groomed through social media applications.  One of the applications he mentioned was Tick Tock being a huge avenue for sex predators.  The predators use these means to integrate themselves into their victim’s life.  He also mentioned the area of sexting and predators using the pictures to extort the victim into doing what they want them to do.

Special Agent Kevin Varpness also discussed the importance of proper security settings being placed on your Facebook and Instagram accounts.  If a person security setting is not set correctly a person can use what you place on these sites to learn your password or use information on the site to ruin a person’s reputation.  The way to mitigate these according to Varpness is to be careful online when you are playing games or interacting with people, do not give into certain communications, and do not engage in risky behavior.  He also discussed how Ransomware has change from the hacker asking for a few hundreds of dollars to a more targeted source for bigger payout (Big Game Hunting).  They are going after corporations. He mentioned that there are several strains of Ransomware and there is a new strain coming out every year.  The avenue that the hackers are using is unsecured Remote Desktop protocol sessions, and email (spearfishing) to obtain credentials.

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Dr. Maanak Gupta, TTI

Dr. Manaak Gupta shared with us the Future of Connected Devices.  He shared the statistics that there are around 500,000 Cybersecurity job openings in the United States alone.  He also discussed Ransomware and how Cybersecurity Ventures is predicting that Ransomware will cost $6 trillion annually by 2021.  Ransomware is a global problem.  We cannot expect cyber-attacks to go down.

Dr. Gupta also discussed Internet of Things (IoT) pointing out that everyone is using Cloud technology.  IoT statistics show that from 2016 to 2025 it is expected that IoT will grow to 75.44 billion devices that will be communicating with each other and sharing data.  With these devices connecting to one another it causes a possibility of exposure.  The exposure can be a threat to privacy, data, and identity theft.  Countermeasures should include proper authentication, encryption, access control, and security monitoring and analysis.

There are around 500,000 Cybersecurity job openings in the United States.

Stephen Penn, AdventHealth

Mr. Stephen Penn discussed the IoT in healthcare devices.  In healthcare the enabled devices are used for remote monitoring. Through this type of monitoring of the patient’s health it helps to reduce hospital stays, prevent re-admissions, and reduce healthcare costs.  IoT is transforming the healthcare industry. Doctor offices are now using devices that help speed up the process of seeing patients by having health information available to them without having to go through pages of information in a folder.

Using connective devices that people wear, to monitor their physical activities and body functions, with the devices at the hospital or doctor office makes it easier for a doctor to track the health of their patients.  Hospitals are also using connected devices to know where personnel are at within the hospital for better patient care.  Mr. Penn also discussed how the hospitals are using devices to scan for a fever as a person walks into the hospital instead of having someone else to scan people.  Medical devices like home devices must be secured to prevent malicious activity.

Kevin Blankenship, VSCC

Kevin Blankenship

Mr. Kevin Blankenship discussed the IoT at Volunteer State Community College (Volstate).  At the college IoT devices are used in the heating and ventilation systems, door access controls, physical access controls, audio and video control systems.  Another area of IoT is the technology being used for COVID-19 scanning and tracing.  Mr. Blankenship stated that any device that is put on a network is an entry point into that network so you must consider what can happen if a device is connected to the network.  Regarding home devices breaches can happen if a person does not change the default password on their devices.  He emphasized that most of the breaches come from a combination of weak security, default passwords not being changed, and using a weak security version of a computer operating system. A person needs to be cognizant of who is on their network when they purchase things like ring doorbells or Alexa devices. It is important to get to know your home network and rotate your passwords.  Do not use the same password for everything.

At VolState vulnerable devices are segmented on the network in order to keep the devices away from crucial data. 

Contributing Authors

Dr. Chenchutta Jackson, Joshua Bond, Dr. Abbas Imam, and Freda Pinkerton 

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Location: 1480 Nashville Pike, Gallatin, TN 37066, USA

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