Imagine planting a tree. Not one of those fast-growing decorative trees, but a real tree. The kind that will one day provide shade, withstand storms, support wildlife, and outlive the person who planted it.

In the beginning, it's not much to look at. A small sapling. Literally a small stick in the ground. It needs water, protection and time. Someone has to make sure it survives the winter. Someone has to protect it from disease. And someone has to accept that for years, it will consume resources without providing any obvious return.

Three ships sitting just 40 km away from Malmö. Not warships, not submarines, just cargo vessels that look ordinary unless you know what you're actually looking at.

JIN HUI, SEA OWL I, and CAFFA. All three are linked to Russia's shadow fleet. And all of them were intercepted by Swedish authorities at the beginning of March this year. Oil moved under sanctions, grain stolen from Ukraine, identities obscured behind flags of convenience, low-quality insurance to hide deficiencies in the vessels' security, and layered ownership designed to make accountability difficult.

You lock your apartment door before leaving. You check it once. Maybe twice. Just to be sure. You might even have a camera at the entrance, a reinforced lock, maybe good insurance. You feel safe. You’ve done your part.

What you usually don’t think about is how many other people could still get in. The cleaning service might have a key. Your landlord definitely has one. Maybe the previous tenant never returned theirs.

Imagine the phone rings. You answer, and you hear, "Hello, this is President Biden. I need you to stay home on election day."

The caller ID looks legitimate. The voice sounds real, just like Biden’s. But it’s not President Biden. It’s an AI-generated deepfake, trained on his public speeches and distributed to thousands of voters in New Hampshire just days before the elections. The goal is to suppress turnout. The cost is a few dollars and the willingness to exploit trust.

I recently watched a crime movie in which the protagonists had to ditch their spyware-ridden smartphones and pull out old Nokias instead. In this scene, the tech guy said: 'We're exploiting the only weakness of new technology: old technology.'

This was, of course, fiction, but it is also one of the most accurate unintentional summaries of the reality of modern cybersecurity.

Imagine being able to upload a selfie to social media without worrying too much. This was the situation just a few years or even months ago. What could happen? At worst, someone could download the image and edit it in Photoshop. However, if you've been following the news recently, you'll have come across a new threat emerging from the heart of our society that will greatly affect how we present ourselves online and even impact our offline lives.

The festive season is approaching, deadlines are over soon and business plans for the new year are being finalized. This is good news for you, your family, and your friends, but it's also good news for the nefarious Christmas elves known as hackers, and they will pretty sure take a strategic advantage out of this.

This time of year is prime time for social engineering attacks. Examples include phishing emails about delayed Christmas gift deliveries for your children, as well as calls regarding urgent payments that supposedly need to be made before the end of the year. The list is endless, and hackers' creativity knows no bounds.

European Cyber Security Month (ECSM) has come to an end. Awareness has been raised, so what could possibly go wrong now? Nobody will click on phishing emails or dodgy adverts, connect USB sticks found in the car park outside the grocery store or install shady software to convert PDFs to Word documents. Right?

Even if you're extremely careful, is the supplier of your highly specialised software taking care of their security? What about the logistics company you exchange emails with daily and have trusted for years?

Athens: Women4Cyber conference. Either a two-hour flight away, or a 55-hour journey by train, bus and ferry. A couple of days full of learning about cyber security, people, fears and myself. As I opted for slow travel due to my aversion to flying, I had plenty of time to read, think, enjoy the views of the Albanian coast and the Balkans' mountains, as well as observe my surroundings and the people around me.

And during all the time, I did not forget about my passion: Cyber Security. So I had some interesting insights. The principles of cyber security can be found everywhere since every principle is just an idea of security with a small grain of bits and bytes. Travelling involves many techniques that we know in cyber security; city life and even hotels have them as well. If you understand these techniques, you will have a good grasp of fundamental cyber security concepts.

Is the answer 42? Your authenticator says yes. Multifactor authentication, also known as second-factor authentication or, more briefly, MFA. Security loves it, users hate it, and management wants efficient, happy employees and bulletproof security at the same time.

Before we explore the importance of targeted communication in cybersecurity and cyber security awareness, let's take a technical look at multi-factor authentication (MFA). How does it work? Is it truly bulletproof? How can attackers still access accounts even when MFA is enabled?

Jamie, Fireflies, and Otter. Sounds like a perfect romantic date night at a nearby lake, with some good food and a warm summer breeze. Right? Right??

I'm sorry to admit, but I'm talking about AI. More specifically, shadow AI. Otter, Fireflies, and Jamie are all AI note-taking tools. They are just one example of the many AI applications that employees use to make their lives easier and their work more effective. All too often, these tools have not been formally approved by the IT or security department (called shadow AI then), so they can pose a real threat to your company.

New cyber trends emerge almost daily. They promise to solve all your problems with minimal effort, offering maximum flexibility, scalability, and reliability - with AI integrated throughout. But what would happen if we focused solely on such solutions?