InfoSec Pros: Carmen Marsh and Confidence Staveley

Cybersecurity expert Kayne McGladrey speaks about why AI cannot do what creative people can, and the important role of generative AI in SOCs.

“These threats are not merely theoretical, although, at the moment, they are still relatively limited in their application,” McGladrey said. “It is reasonable to expect that threat actors will continue to find innovative new uses of generative AI, extending beyond business email compromise, deepfakes, and the generation of attack code.”

My prediction for 2024: In response to increasing regulatory burdens and the risk of civil litigation, successful companies in 2024 will lean into enhancements in their compliance operations. They will actively collect and test evidence of security control effectiveness, linking these controls directly to their risks, across all critical assets or systems. This approach ensures companies are confident in accurately describing how well they manage their risk portfolio, including in SEC filings. The automation of compliance operations enables security and audit professionals to spend more time doing the parts of their jobs that they love. Furthermore, as supply chain risks intensify scrutiny of B2B transactions, companies will efficiently repurpose many of their controls and control evidence. This strategy not only allows companies to secure additional attestations or certifications such as ISO or SOC 2 without increasing their workforce, but it also provides a significant competitive business advantage.

The focus has been on knowing where the crown jewels sit and protecting that space. CSHub Executive Board Member and IEEE Public Visibility Initiative spokesperson Kayne McGladrey notes, “if you don’t know where your data live, you can’t apply any effective policies around access controls or do any meaningful incident response or do any meaningful security awareness.”

“If the end user logs on from Seattle, where their mobile phone and laptop is, a connection from New York would be unusual,” McGladrey explained. “It is also possible to note the typing style and speed of a user and use that biometric signature to determine if the user is legitimate. These data [points] make it more difficult for a threat actor to operate silently in the environment.”

“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