IT Essentials: Be Muhammad Ali

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee

A string of retail cyber incidents emphasises the need for agility, defence and powerful retaliation – but balancing all three is exhausting.

“A wild left hand, a vicious hook, a real strong right hand, and Muhammed Ali is taking some punishment now.”

That's a snippet of the first-round commentary from history’s most famous boxing match, the Rumble in the Jungle. George Foreman, the younger and stronger fighter, was the favourite, but Muhammad Ali wore his opponent down over eight rounds and finished him off with a left-right combo that left Foreman on the mat.

The modern CISO needs to be Muhammad Ali; and, by happy coincidence, working in cyber today is the closest you’ll get short of stepping into the ring yourself. An unending barrage of phishing, spoofing and exploits that set you up for the powerhouse blows of deepfakes and ransomware.

That’s where the Ali analogy wears a bit thin. While cyber teams aren’t throwing haymakers like Foreman, they’re getting worn down in the same way – even big companies like Marks & Spencer can lack a plan to deal with a cyberattack. And this is a global problem. Luxury French brand Dior became the latest retailer to fall this week, and US firms are under threat.

So, what can a 1974 boxing match teach us about cybersecurity? That you need be both Ali and Foreman. Roll with all the punches. Don’t wear yourself out. Protect yourself from haymakers (deepfakes, quantum threats), but don’t let a jab (social engineering, insider threats, credential theft) wallop you in the face.

Ali didn’t win by running away. He did it by standing there and trading strength and punches with the champion.

While M&S, Harrods and Dior all fell to cyber incidents, the Co-op stayed standing (to a point). Stuart Sumner has investigated the security tools the supermarket used to pinpoint and fend off the attackers.

Phishing remains a thorn in the side for all of us, even though we’ve been dealing with it for decades. John Leonard goes back to its roots in the 18th century and asks, why do we still fall for phishing?

Women entrepreneurs’ access to finance is still controlled primarily by men – and that’s making us all poorer, writes Penny Horwood, as she investigates the funding barriers facing female founders.

And the National Trust is on a mission to protect British nature – I talked to head of data Huw Davies and GIS product manager Ian Dawes about how they’re using tech to transform land management.