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.

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One biggest threats in cyber security remains outdated software.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 Similar risks exist for businesses that are using outdated software, as the original vendors often stop fixing bugs and adding patches in favour of a more recent product.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.

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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!