Facing Cyberthreats and Misinfo in a Tense Political Climate

Enterprises might find themselves defending against politically driven cyber threats even if the organization has not taken a stance in the ongoing discourse.

Political rhetoric in the United States already reached bombastic heights before the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, and the decision by President Joe Biden to withdraw his candidacy from the 2024 presidential race and back Vice-President Kamala Harris instead. The remaining months leading to the upcoming election could see digital disruptions -- potentially from internal and external actors.

InformationWeek surveys have shown businesses can face socio-political disturbances along with other types of calamities. Sentiment and emotions may motivate “hacktivists” to strike at websites, attempt to spread misinformation, or target supply chains for political reasons. Meanwhile, opportunists with personal or monetary motives might simply want to take advantage of the climates of fear and tension.

How proactive should enterprises be to police employees as potential internal bad actors who want to take political cyber action by striking at company resources? Is the current political environment primed for aggressor nation states, or their hired proxies, to launch cyber-attacks at the United States?

In this episode of DOS Won’t Hunt, Eric Wenger, senior director for cyber and emerging tech policy with Cisco; Roman Arutyunov, co-founder and senior vice president of products with Xage Security; Dennis Dayman, CISO with Code42; TK Keanini, CTO with DNSFilter; and Akash Agarwal, director of engineering and DevSecOps with LambdaTest, discuss ways to address possible cyber threats and misinformation in the workplace during this intensely partisan era.

Listen to the full podcast here.