Change Drivers for 2017 & Beyond

- inspired by the 2016 SCIP Portugal Christmas Dinner -  

The Portuguese Competitive Intelligence community Christmas Dinner is now an institutionalised event. This year, the second under the SCIP Portugal Chapter umbrella, innovated in content and format.

A new Social Learning approach was used with great effect with four top experts in the fields of Intelligence – Helena Rêgo, Geopolitics and Economics – José Felix Ribeiro, Cybersecurity- Jo?o Barreto, and Data Protection – Manuel Melo, whom accepted the challenge to discuss these topics in a deliberate small and private SCIP's Portugal forum.

A few lucky ones got the chance to seat at the table, hence this article to contribute with actionable insights to the community at large.

The overarching topic was 2017 Change Drivers. And the discussion topics and conclusions were quite surprising… if not, check them below.

What follows is not a summary but a collection of topics discussed and thought igniters.

The current external environment, currently classified as V.U.C.A. – volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous –, will be exacerbated by recent events such as Trump election in the US and his staff nominations (e.g. National Security Adviser), Brexit in the UK, Spain and Italy‘s current political turmoil and banking crisis, global protectionism and Europe’s right swinging movement.

A quick and good summary was written about these and other 13 impossible crises humanity faces. If that does not put you in overdrive, Saxobank outrageous predictions can help you imagine some other mind blowing scenarios.

Portugal is living the normal attraction of the normality per the former Portuguese Tourism Officer. But we can go as far as asking:

“Would it be possible to have a Donald Trump in Portugal”?

And all this turmoil can work in Portugal’s favour as it seems.

What is not in Portugal’s favour is the economic espionage on the rise, which led SIS (Servi?os de Informa??es de Seguran?a), the Portuguese Intelligence services to initiate a campaign to make this problem aware to the economic agents.

This is not a Portuguese topic only though, and thyssenkrupp is the proof. And it is not just the economic agents being spied upon as well, Google warned journalists and professors that their account is under attack.

Globally, the new 'Facebook Democracy', also called the 'politics uberisation' characterised by disintermediation, is challenging the traditional filters that society got used to, usually done by the press and academics (can you see the connection here?). We are now being impacted directly by “consumer” generated news, so much as there are entire cities generating them.

This deliberate disinformation builds on top of the incapacity to process the already existing data tsunami, as well as on our natural analysis biases, and the ever-diminishing attention span (which is currently lower than a goldfish!).

The need to 'get it' visually has never been so big, and to 'get it' first is even bigger, making the real-time the zeitgeist (a sign of the times). Visualisation is increasingly seen as a critical tool to connect the dots developing critical insights, as well as for communicating those insights efficiently. 

We will have to learn how to self-check the news and get the facts. CIA did it for us on the outcome of the Trump election and the result seems to be that Russia had something to do with it! Did I mention complexity before…? Oh yes, the 'C' in VUCA right in the beginning!

All this disinformation is a crime, and Cybercrime is now bigger than Drug Trafficking just so you know. And, Cybercrime is global as the playing ground is the World Wide Web, but so are its players. People who know are saying that Brazilians still have a long way to go, Chinese are geopolitically motivated and take a long-term approach, Easterners have first and foremost an economic motivation allowed by their governments which in exchange use them for geopolitical purposes as well, and finally the Indians who are becoming top performers! An interesting chart on the changing attacker profiles can be seen on the end of page 9 of this Mcaffee report.

Cybercriminals seem to be always in front of security analysts, companies, and of course, citizens. This raises the question whether the Cybercriminal is more intelligent than the “Hand of the Law”. It seems not, but they have their problem very well defined, which helps them focus on finding the way to hack the system, while Cybersecurity agents are always on the reactive side of things.

This is leading Crime as a Service, which is now an established reality, as anyone can hire someone to hack pretty much everything, from hacking a Facebook account to hack a WhatsApp conversation, as well as to Crimeware. According to Panda Security,

“Crimeware can be defined as the programs and social engineering designed to fraudulently obtain financial gain from either the affected user or third parties. Social engineering, in this context, involves trying to obtain confidential information from users by tricking them into doing things that their security policy would prevent them from doing. It's the perfect combination: a carefully selected social engineering ploy convinces users to hand over their data or install a malicious program which captures information and sends it on to the fraudsters.”

Some years ago, the McKinsey Global Institute published an analysis (map) about the evolution of economic center of gravity between AD 1 and 2025. Main conclusion is that it the economic center is heading back to where it all started, in Asia. An unfamiliar name to American consumers, Huawei produces products that are swiftly being installed in the internet backbone in many regions of the world, displacing some of the western-built equipment, namely Cisco. This is confirming the map’s trend, and it is also how Huawei became the NSA’s worst nightmare.

Another daunting fact is that at least 1/3 of our computers are infected and being monitored for a future Cyberattack. People are still the weakest link when it comes to cyber security, which is why psychological manipulation of cyberattack victims is so common. Social Engineering is the weapon of choice. This is leading to an increasing pressure for privacy from the common citizen, although his information is freely disclosed on Social Media.

And all this seem to have confluence into the perfect storm, in the year social media changed everything. An interesting statistic complements this perfectly with 93% of buying decisions influenced by Social Media. All this at the same time LinkedIn reduces minimum age to have an account to 13 years old.

The 'omnipresence' of cybercriminals, who do not to be present in the crime scene to commit it, together with the fact that it is possible to stay unnoticed for a long time in the Digital environment, is making protection a tough job. The only opportunity relies on the need to convert the digital spoil in to real world money, and that leads to some arrests but of low ranked operationalists, not the masterminds above. 

And that leads us to the legal gap between the law that is enforced and the real world we are living in. Until some time ago this gap could reach 25 years, which was reduced in Portugal today. But the speed of change is increasing exponentially and cybercrime rewards have a ratio of 1:100!

Cybercrime will continue to flourish by the lack of capabilities to enforce the law. In fact, there is a threshold, both in monetary terms and severity of the crime, under which there is no resources to even investigate the crime, let alone enforce the law. This “hole” is the paradise of the “small” cybercrime, but more serious crimes are also very difficult to enforce the law upon. Here is an example on the real fight to virtual crime.

The State is being unable for the time being to protect their citizens and its enterprises, hence education and prevention is critical. Quoting David Sable CEO of Y&R,

“With big data implosions abounding, people will now look for human insight, beyond the bits and bytes, that is based on real human understanding, empathy and analysis.”

And this is where Competitive Intelligence will play its part, in response to the 'power to the people' that was given through technology, namely the internet and connectivity, the individual must rise to the occasion to protect and defend himself and its companies so, in the end, the state is secured.

This will be only possible if the common citizen will be able to perform Competitive Intelligence at both his personal and professional level, implementing the critical thinking and information management skills that come with it.