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RSA Influencers Identify Cybersecurity’s Top Issues

More interest, more news, and more money are swirling through the cybersecurity industry than perhaps ever before. Data breaches make headlines, shape elections, and lead to Congressional hearings. Artificial intelligence tools wow the public and stretch the limits of the imagination.

And the 40,000 RSA Conference attendees pouring into San Francisco are not impressed. Cybersecurity is a profession, they say, not a circus.

We reached out to RSA speakers and attendees and asked what they think is the most relevant recent development in cybersecurity. They gave us a variety of answers, many with the central theme that companies and consumers should not believe the hype. Cybersecurity still is – and perhaps always will be – about seasoned professionals patiently applying good tools in a comprehensive way.

“The problem we’re seeing at trade shows recently is there is very little new,” said John Bambenek, a vice president at ThreatSTOP who lectures on cybersecurity at the University of Illinois. “We’re still trying to solve the same old problems in the same ways with newish looking packaging. What’s being overlooked is actually spending the time developing understanding of attacks, threats, and trends so models can be truly informed before making decisions.”

Caroline Wong, Vice President of Security Strategy at Cobalt, agreed. You can’t just turn the latest tools on and watch them vanquish threats. “There’s a big push in DevSecOps for more and more automation, but it’s critical to remember that when it comes to web applications and APIs, manual pen testing is required to discover vulnerabilities in application business logic. Automated scans often miss the most interesting security vulnerabilities.”

 

 

“Automated scans often miss the most interesting security vulnerabilities.”

– Caroline Wong, Cobalt

“Assuming that machine learning models and classifiers will work 100% of the time is setting your SOC up to fail,” wrote McAfee CISO Grant Bourzikas in an RSA blog post titled, “What humans do better than machines.” Bourzikas and McAfee Chief Human Resources Officer Chatelle Lynch will host a session at RSA on how innovation can help companies retain top talent. “Recruiting and retaining a diverse talent pool in cybersecurity today is so competitive,” Lynch said of her session. “Employees want to know they are at a company that strives for the latest innovation.” But that is always within the realm of human-machine teaming at McAfee, Bourzikas says. Shiny new tech must be paired with human analysis.

Many cited human decisions about data regulation – the opposite of whiz-bang security tech – as one of the main issues in cybersecurity today.

“The most important development in cybersecurity is Facebook’s reaction to the imminent enforcement of GDPR,” says Kevin L. Jackson, Founder and CEO of GovCloud Network. “The sound of Facebook’s leadership failure is deafening. The legal battles around data privacy and security will drive whatever happens across the entire cybersecurity landscape, including what technology is deployed.”

 

 

“The sound of Facebook’s leadership failure is deafening.”

– Kevin L. Jackson, GovCloud Network

Kathy Delaney Winger, a Tucson-based lawyer whose areas of practice include cybersecurity, concurred. “Businesses may be surprised to learn that they are obligated to comply with laws such as New York’s cybersecurity regulation and the GDPR – even though they do not fall under the jurisdiction of the enacting entities.”

 

“Far too many small and mid-size businesses simply underestimate the impact that the EU General Data Protection Regulation will have on them,” said Ben Rothke, principal security consultant for Nettitude.

 

 

GDPR preparation doesn’t have to be drudgery. Flora Garcia, a McAfee attorney writing about the regulations, has suggested GDPR can also stand for Great Data Protection Rocks. Data protection could even be a shared global citizenship effort along the lines of environmentalism, she says.

 

The data-protection revolution may even have us rethinking the nature of identity. “The identity industry is moving away from identity,” said Steve Wilson, vice president and principal analyst of Constellation Research, Inc. “What matters in authentication? Not who someone is, but what they are. You need to know something specific about a counter-party, like their age, or their address, or their credit card number, or their nationality, or some mix of these things. You don’t really need to know their identity. This is a very fundamental shift in thinking, and it’s just the beginning of a major regulatory push around data provenance.”

 

“The identity industry is moving away from identity.”

– Steve Wilson, Constellation Research, Inc.

Grounded data-protection hygiene and cybersecurity discipline that looks past the cool factor are not preventing RSA attendees from looking at the very latest threats. “These days, attackers are increasingly focused on cryptocurrencies – stealing them, mining them via cryptojacking or obtaining them as ransom,” said Nick Bilogorskiy, who drives cybersecurity strategy at Juniper Networks and was previously Chief Malware Expert at Facebook. “As companies do not usually have crypto wallets to steal, attackers turn to ransomware because it provides the best bang for the buck and is the logical choice for attackers to monetize business breaches. I expect ransomware and other cryptocurrency malware attacks to grow in popularity this year.”

But even the most quickly evolving threats are enterprises launched by people, aimed at people, and shut down by people. Raj Samani, McAfee’s Chief Scientist, says ransomware and its many forms can be beaten by people – if they get the right help. “The purpose of pseudo-ransomware is typically destruction, but we have seen evidence of its use as a diversionary tactic, and whilst it may appear as traditional ransomware the attackers are unlikely to provide any decryption capability regardless whether the ransom is paid. Either way, with actual ransomware or the decoy tactic, organizations need guidance to mitigate the risk.” Samani is speaking about pseudo-ransomware during his session on the topic at RSA.

Everything in cybersecurity may seem new, baffling, and roiling with change. But people can apply lessons of the past – such as with airport security changes after 9/11 – to find solutions in the future, said McAfee CEO Chris Young. “Smart security changed air travel from top to bottom. We need to bring a cybersecurity paradigm shift that is more collaborative, clear and accessible,” Young said of his RSA keynote on what cybersecurity can learn from those who keep air travel safe.

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