Opening keynote speech at the Seattle Electrical Conference

Cybersecurity has always been a critical task that must be handled effectively. However, cloud—and more recently—COVID 19—have exacerbated cybersecurity issues and changed the security landscape. In this episode of the podcast, Mike Kavis and guest, Ascent Solutions’ Kayne McGladrey, discuss cybersecurity in the context of cloud, and vis-à-vis the changes wrought by the pandemic. Kayne’s take is that the transition to cloud and the pandemic have exposed and magnified issues that have always been a problem, and that companies should not skimp on cybersecurity, in favor of spending on other “more pressing” projects. The key to success is to focus on data, automation, and risk assessment.

“Realistically, the use of AI in cybersecurity will help to reduce the punishing cognitive load on tier one analysts in the security operation center,” said IEEE Senior Member Kayne McGladrey. “Rather than having to comb through a needlestack looking for a needle, AI promises to automate much of the correlation across vast amounts of data that humans struggle with.”

“Multi-factor authentication and passwordless technologies help to protect our digital identities and account credentials from theft or impersonation. This matters just as much to an individual using a hardware key to access their online bank as it does for a corporate employee using facial recognition to access a privileged administrative account.”

– Kayne McGladrey, IEEE Senior Member

You receive a text message or an email notification from your mobile carrier about an account change you didn’t make and, thirty minutes later, your cell phone has no signal, even after a reboot. You can’t log into your email. You’re locked out of your bank account.

Did you miss Black Hat this year? Well you won’t miss the great conversations that were had, as Allan captured so many good ones for this special Black Hat retrospective episode.

“Have a KPI about value that came out of your threat intelligence feed. Did it actually cause you to do something differently? Were your analysts able to act on this, or was it just another thing that they had to go look at? Because when you think of time as being our chief enemy, if it’s sucking time and not producing value, why do you keep it? It’s a data feed, ultimately. At the end of the day, you have to contextualize it in terms of your organization. Threat actors tend to vary in terms of behavior in their TTPs. And consequently, you need to really tailor your threat intelligence. And if you’re not getting that tailored information, drop it.”