InfoSec Pros: Carmen Marsh and Confidence Staveley

“It remains a very complicated role because you have to ultimately be able to speak, to three separate audiences: the business folks- who are interested in cost controls and also cost savings and cost improvements, and material effect of the business. The technology folks: who want to know that you’re doing the cyber right. And legal folks: who want to know that they’re adequately shielding the business from legal and regulatory risk.”

“The explosion of connected devices also requires re-thinking the protection mechanisms to apply to those endpoints,” notes Kayne McGladrey, Director of Security and IT, Pensar Development. “Similarly, the widespread adoption of cloud-based services means that there’s no single network to protect.”

“Organizations need to use any reputable risk methodology to prioritize the risks to their endpoints and to develop mitigation strategies,” says Pensar Development’s McGladrey.

“This (factors into) the broader economic outlook,” McGladrey told the Cyber Security Hub. “If the economy is thriving and people are considering asking for a raise, they may pursue a new certification. If they do not receive the raise, they may mentally justify the time spent by putting the certification on their resume and searching for new openings.”

The big picture: AI model operators don’t have a good way of reigning in these malicious use cases, Kayne McGladrey, a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), told Axios. Allowing LLMs to digest and train on CVE data can help defenders synthesize the wave of threat alerts coming their way each day. Operators have only two real choices in this type of situation: allow the models to train on security vulnerability data or completely block them from accessing vulnerability lists, he added. “It’s going to be a feature of the landscape because it is a dual-use technology at the end of the day,” McGladrey said.

Kayne McGladrey (@kaynemcgladrey), security architect at Ascent Solutions LLC, said that providing secure access to corporate data for employees regardless of the location of either the employees or the data is still the biggest concern for companies with a hybrid workforce. “Solving this is the core of a Zero Trust strategy, he added. “Zero Trust is now the foundation of modern defensive architectures that companies should use to reduce the material risks associated with legitimate threats.”

As CISOs make plans to secure operating budgets for the new financial year, they face the age-old challenge of convincing stakeholders, who often see cybersecurity and privacy as a cost center, to invest in this area. It’s time to change the narrative. Discover how to drive more productive conversations about cybersecurity as a strategic growth enabler. Take home actionable ideas for proactively managing controls and risks, increasing efficiency and reducing costs.

Learning Objectives:

Apply techniques and strategies needed to shift the perception of cybersecurity and privacy from cost centers to strategic growth enablers within the organization.

Employ methods for applying proactive control management and risk mitigation methods to enhance an organization’s cybersecurity posture and minimize potential threats.

Identify opportunities for efficiency gains and cost reductions in cybersecurity initiatives, in order to make impactful budgetary decisions for the coming year.