Are you in control? How healthy is your personal cyber risk…

Modern society is precipitously embracing ever-improving technologies, riotously adopting digital solutions into our everyday lives. Whilst this phenomenon has proven to significantly improve productivity, communication, and our quality of life it has also furnished all digitally enabled users a ubiquitous and undesirable distinction – our own unique personal cyber risk profile. Whilst most technology users are peripherally aware of this ‘new’ peril how many of us are activity aware of, and zealously manage our personal cyber risk?

Pragmatically, everyone’s personal cyber risk profile is different. Even within the same household, a teenager firmly entrenched within the online gaming community who spends way too much time engrossed online has a distinctive and disparate cyber risk to that of their GenX, somewhat conservative parents. The ability to assess an individual’s personal cyber risk profile is challenging, relying on appraising elements such as cyber awareness, knowledge and experience with cyber risk (possibly having previously experienced an adverse cyber event, or having completed cyber security training). These factors impact meaningfully on how we behave within cyberspace, and these behaviours directly affect our cyber risk profile.

The scale and speed of technological innovation and adoption is oft overwhelming, particularly to those less enabled and vulnerable such as the elderly. Unfortunately, cyberspace is impartial to an individual’s status or digital capability: susceptible individuals are targeted just as much as IT specialists. The ability therefore, of individuals to maintain awareness of the multitude of technology advances such as ChatGPT, crypto-currency and self-driving vehicles is rapidly becoming unfeasible – possibly leading to a phenomenon of ‘digital-‘ or ‘cyber-fatigue’ whereby there is greater acceptance of cyber risk and associated consequences as the effort to maintain currency in defensive strategies is simply too odious.

The dangers of this scenario are obvious. Our devices and supporting networks are increasingly interconnected… our data typically held by a multitude of 3rd parties, large and small… and cybercriminals are dynamic, an intelligent and continually adapting adversary. Adopting a strategy of ‘doing nothing’ only increases our personal cyber risk profile. If it were measured as a country, then cybercrime – which is predicted to inflict damages totalling USD$6 trillion globally in 2021, would be the third largest economy in the world after the United States and China. We need a mechanism that addresses the distinctive idiosyncrasies of cyberspace in a manner that assists us all in improving our level of cyber ‘awareness’ and ‘knowledge’, thus pivoting our cyber behaviours to become more ‘cyber-savvy’ and improve our cyber risk profile.

Choosing to reduce our personal cyber risk exposure by adopting pro-active cyber strategies is imperative to maintain a healthy digital persona. Actions designed to mitigate cyber risk need not be heinously difficult – simple things such as consciously improving our cyber hygiene by always using multi-factor authentication, using pseudonyms instead of our real name in online communities, never sharing personal or sensitive data unless it is encrypted, or arranging specific personal cyber insurance for your family all contribute to meaningfully improving your personal cyber risk profile.

It's never too late to start. The question of whether you will be adversely impacted by a cyber incident is irrelevant.

The question is when.