Cybersecurity: Top 100 Influencers and Brands

Disclaimer: As ever with these lists, it must be stressed that the ranking below is by no means a definitive measurement of influence, as there is no such thing. The people listed below are undoubtedly influential when it comes to driving discussion within the context of cybersecurity.

The PageRank based methodology we use to extract influencers on a particular topic (tweets mentioning #cybersecurity or “cybersecurity” in this case) takes into account the number and quality of contextual references that a user receives. These calculations are independent of a user’s number of followers, but we do filter our lists based on how much a user is engaged in the conversation and the influence they drive through their networks.

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Cybersecurity is becoming an ultimate priority for governments and businesses in 2015. Target, Sony, Pinterest and Adobe are among businesses that fell victim to hacking in the past 4 years.

In total, these 4 companies had data breaches on over 400M customer records. For some including email, telephone numbers, customer IDs but also credit card numbers, birth dates and addresses. These 4 cases still count among the top 10 cyber incidents of all time.

Two days ago security researcher Chris Roberts claimed that he hacked a plane in mid-flight. Roberts allegedly accessed the planes’ network through the in-flight entertainment system. He also claims that this hack allowed him access to critical systems such as the fuel balancing and thrust control systems.

Mr Roberts has told the FBI that he had been accessing these systems around 15 times between 2011 and 2015.

One biggest threats in cyber security remains outdated software. Many of these in-flight entertainment systems are between 5 and 10 years old and can be hacked quite easily according to numerous researchers. Similar risks exist for businesses that are using outdated software, as the original vendors often stop fixing bugs and adding patches in favour of a more recent product.

At the time of writing, discussions are still ongoing on whether Roberts truly accessed certain avionic systems. Plane manufacturers claim that these are separated from in-flight entertainment systems and cannot be accessed from any passenger seat. This looks like it might be a hacking saga and was destined as a marketing coup for Roberts.

With the Internet of Things and cloud based computing making immense progress in business applications and consumer products, cyber security threats will increase as well.

Mapping The Network

When analysing the network map (+160k users) on cybersecurity we can immediately see the difference in the size of nodes between the brands (in blue) and the individuals (in red). The brands are more influential in this particular discussion and seem to be driving the cybersecurity discussion more than the individuals.

These network maps are great way of understanding key discussions on social media between brands and individuals. Kasperksy and Interpol_Cyber are the most influential nodes, but the interactions are truly driven by the smaller brands. Illustrating this is Treadstone71LLC which is the node located upper left in the brands (blue) and counts an enormous amount of interactions towards the individuals (red lines) as well as the brands (blue lines). Keep scrolling to find out who ranks among the most influential in cybersecurity.

Top 100 Individuals

At Onalytica we knew that cybersecurity was a big topic in traditional media as well as social media. We analysed over 600,000 tweets over the past +90 days to present insightful data on who is truly leading this trending discussion. Stay up to date on what’s hot in cybersecurity by downloading our full report just below.

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Rank	Twitter Handle	Name	PageRank (Normalised)
1	@trevortimm	Trevor Timm	100
2	@e_kaspersky	Eugene Kaspersky	90.94
3	@gabeygoh	Gabey Goh	77.1
4	@BenDiPietro1	Ben DiPietro	65.01
5	@GovInfoSecurity	Eric Chabrow	47.56
6	@zackwhittaker	Zack Whittaker	43.12
7	@ZDNetCharlie	Charlie Osborne	39.33
8	@granick	Jennifer Granick	37.55
9	@SaraSorcher	Sara Sorcher	37.26
10	@peterwsinger	Peter W. Singer	36.19
11	@ErrataRob	Rob Graham	35.99
12	@KevinBankston	Kevin Bankston	35.23
13	@froomkin	Dan Froomkin	34.64
14	@ron_miller	Ron Miller	32.92
15	@Beaker	Hoff	32.67
16	@Jose_Pagliery	Jose Pagliery	30.75
17	@garyjdavis	Gary Davis	30.2
18	@FutureCrimes	Marc Goodman	29.15
19	@benatworkdc	Ben FitzGerald	28.95
20	@SangerNYT	David Sanger	28.51
21	@attackerman	Spencer Ackerman	27.98
22	@kevinmitnick	Kevin Mitnick	27.37
23	@HurdOnTheHill	Rep. Will Hurd	25.21
24	@alex	Alex	24.7
25	@eliseviebeck	Elise Viebeck	24.26
26	@MikeDeCesare	Mike DeCesare	24
27	@adschina	Adam Segal	23.84
28	@LaMonicaBuzz	Paul R. La Monica	23.69
29	@emm_david	David Emm	23.41
30	@shaneharris	Shane Harris	23.32
31	@damianpaletta	Damian Paletta	23.17
32	@robertherjavec	Robert Herjavec	22.83
33	@taosecurity	Richard Bejtlich	22.57
34	@joltsik	Jon Oltsik	21.51
35	@Aliya_NextGov	Aliya Sternstein	21.11
36	@WeldPond	Chris Wysopal	20.74
37	@RAPst4r	Reuben Paul	20.23
38	@nealunger	Neal Ungerleider	19.95
39	@mikkosniemela	Mikko S. Niemelä	19.48
40	@kimberlyanngeo	Kimberly George	18.88
41	@RobertMLee	Robert M. Lee	18.59
42	@kmingis	Ken Mingis	18.49
43	@editingwhiz	Chris Preimesberger	18.44
44	@juliusclark	Julius	17.68
45	@ananalytical	Josh Goldfarb	17.63
46	@sfwriter	Rachael King	17.62
47	@ericgeller	Eric Geller	17.26
48	@johncvillanueva	John Carl Villanueva	17.19
49	@Bob_Moritz	Bob Moritz	17.09
50	@craigbrownphd	Craig Brown, Ph.D.	16.93

 

Top 100 Brands

In our brands analysis it was not surprising finding the handles from Interpol and Homeland Security in the top 10, as cybersecurity is a big challenge for governments in the coming decades. The top 100 contains an expected mix of government, business and journalistic brands. Kaspersky, Symantec, IBM and Raytheon are among the top 50 including well-known publications like Computerworld, TechCrunch, CIO.com and many more.

Be sure to grab the full top 100 report to see where brands like Juniper Networks, Intel Security, RSA Security, Cisco Security, CA technologies, Veracode, Imperva and many more rank.

DOWNLOAD THE FULL REPORT

Rank	Twitter Handle	Name	PageRank (Normalised)
1	@INTERPOL_Cyber	INTERPOL_Cyber	100
2	@Stanford	Stanford University	74.67
3	@TrendMicro	Trend Micro	73.3
4	@kaspersky	Kaspersky Lab	69.09
5	@RSAConference	RSA Conference	44.97
6	@Recode	Re/code	39.35
7	@ZDNet	ZDNet	37.78
8	@symantec	Symantec	37.56
9	@DHSgov	Homeland Security	35.78
10	@TechCrunch	TechCrunch	31.73
11	@SputnikInt	Sputnik	29.21
12	@FireEye	FireEye	28.98
13	@CyberExaminer	Digital Forensics	27.62
14	@CIOonline	CIO.com	26.6
15	@IBMSecurity	IBM Security	26.1
16	@Computerworld	Computerworld	24.93
17	@LogRhythm	LogRhythm	24.5
18	@NewAmerica	New America	22.89
19	@WIRED	WIRED	22.79
20	@DarkReading	DarkReading	20.91
21	@CSMPasscode	CSMPasscode	20.37
22	@VZEnterprise	Verizon Enterprise	19.13
23	@MEMMOSdubai	MEMMOS Enterprises	19.01
24	@EFF	EFF	18.65
25	@ReutersTech	Reuters Tech News	18.51
26	@nuix	Nuix	18.43
27	@DNewsAsia	Digital News Asia	18.05
28	@SCMagazine	SCMagazine	17.67
29	@cyber	Cybersecurity	17.21
30	@ISACANews	ISACA International	16.53
31	@InfosecurityMag	Infosecurity	15.3
32	@Slate	Slate	13.73
33	@Security_411	Security_411	13.61
34	@NSA_PAO	NSA/CSS	13.39
35	@NuHarbor	NuHarbor Security	13.12
36	@Raytheon	Raytheon	12.77
37	@ITworld	ITworld	10.62
38	@Treadstone71LLC	Treadstone 71	10.5
39	@dhsscitech	DHS S&T	10.26
40	@FierceHealthIT	FierceHealthIT	10.21
41	@SecurityWeek	SecurityWeek	10.06
42	@Inc	Inc.	10.01
43	@ITBusinessEdge	IT Business Edge	9.8
44	@Techmeme	Techmeme	9.77
45	@Cyveillance	Cyveillance	9.6
46	@enisa_eu	ENISA	9.56
47	@mashable	Mashable	9.39
48	@CSOonline	CSOonline	9.36
49	@verge	The Verge	9.28
50	@VentureBeat	VentureBeat	9.27

 

At Onalytica we love building these lists and want to give back to our loyal readers as much as we can. If you’re interested in other topics (such as Machine to Machine , Wearables , Internet of Things , …) be sure to have a gander on our blog or why not propose some topics to us on twitter? We also build some very cool software to manage all of these influencers. Get a free demo today by clicking the button below!

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