Cyber warfare is as much about psychological strategy as technical prowess.

Cybersecurity whitepaper authors have it all wrong! It’s about weaponizing the mind of the reader so that when they’re done reading the document, you’ve memetically drilled home actionable concepts that will expediently impact their cyber defense.

The disturbingly techno-illiterate and cyber-hygienically lackadaisical and shockingly arrogant responses by the National Association of Secretaries of States when we at ICIT repeatedly showed them what their vulnerabilities were and exactly how elections could be compromised is a betrayal of trust to offer safe and legitimate elections. The technical vulnerabilities littering our election systems is only part of the problem.

I don’t care how secure you think your organization is, I’ll social engineer my way inside in less than 24 hours regardless of the sophistication of your IoT microcosm security. Whatever obstacles I run into exploiting your technical vulnerabilities will be made up for by exploiting the vulnerabilities in the cyber hygiene of your staff.

The way to stifle China’s growth is to inhibit the flow of their connectivity. In order to slow down Chinese expansion, we need to cripple their cyber-kinetic-political connectivity. Indirect polarization, in all forms, must be at the forefront of the agenda when conducting influence operations on all things China.

Cyber hygiene, patching vulnerabilities, security by design, threat hunting and machine learning based artificial intelligence are mandatory prerequisites for cyber defense against the next generation threat landscape.