Just in time for October’s Cybersecurity Awareness Month, the Department of FI$Cal (the Financial Information System for California) is pleased to announce its new chief information security officer (CISO), following the retirement of our previous CISO.
Amit Biswas brings 25 years of information technology experience to the department and is an experienced technology manager, architect and engineer. Prior to joining FI$Cal, Amit worked in the private sector in the San Francisco Bay Area, Texas, Canada and India. During that time, he managed profit and cost centers, technology businesses and large teams.
Amit has a Bachelor of Technology degree in electronics and communication engineering from Indian Institute of Technology – Kharagpur; a Master of Business Administration from Indian Institute of Management – Ahmedabad; a Master’s in computer engineering from Concordia University – Montreal; and a Ph.D. in computer science and engineering from Texas A&M University. He holds several security-related industry certifications, including Certified Information Systems Security Professional, Certified Cloud Security Professional, and Computing Technology Industry Association Security; he has also published several technical articles.
At FI$Cal, Amit intends to improve the maturity of our security operations and continue to develop our security staff’s technical and collaborative skills.
In recognition of Cybersecurity Awareness Month, we asked Amit to share some tips and tricks to keep in mind for our ever-changing cybersecurity landscape. He shared the following tips:
Be on Guard Against Social Engineering
Social engineering, a common form of cyber attack, uses deception to manipulate individuals into sharing confidential or personal information. Phishing attacks are a common type of social engineering, where bad actors send information, usually via email, that purport to be from a company or someone the individual knows; they request the person to click on a link to download information, or to send sensitive information. Individuals should be careful when clicking on links or divulging sensitive information. But email phishing isn’t the only way social engineering attacks may come. Now, with artificial intelligence, attacks are becoming more sophisticated.
Familiarize Yourself With Artificial Intelligence
Today, AI is being used to create sophisticated deceptions and is one of the newest ways people and organizations can fall victim to cyber attacks. AI technologies are capable of mimicking a human’s voice, intonations, styles, facial features, gaits, etc. to carry out human-like live conversations over phone, video or via chat. These “deepfakes” are the latest methods being used to trick people into taking action they otherwise would not. Current news and law enforcement agency warnings prove that these capabilities are actually being used at a large scale to impersonate our colleagues, customers and supervisors, to manipulate us into doing things that can lead to a cyber attack or fraud. Take time to identify ways to spot an AI deepfake, including identifying unnatural facial movements, out-of-sync voices, or other AI “tells.”
Stay Vigilant
Cybersecurity is all of our responsibility. It’s always a good idea to start questioning, start reflecting, start looking for security weaknesses while on the job and at home. People are our most valuable and important resource when it comes to thwarting a cyber attack.
Thank you, Amit, and welcome to FI$Cal!
