by T.J. Minichillo
[This is the second of a 4-part series about what it means to be truly resilient in the cyber security industry]
In my previous post, I challenged every infosec professional attending RSA’s virtual conference this week to dispel their preconceived notions of “resilience” by opening their minds to a massive new cybersecurity paradigm shift centered around data itself.
Why data?
Because uninterrupted data flows are the heart and soul of every business. Yet the vast majority of traditional security tools and technologies on the market today leave data vulnerable to cyber attacks and exfiltration for one basic reason: data can’t protect itself. An elegant security strategy, on the other hand, allows data to flow freely and securely through an organization’s network, without interruption or fear of compromise by cyber criminals, because now it CAN protect itself! Data flows, like business itself, should be nimble, flexible and elastic.
The essence of cybersecurity resilience is enabling a business to grow — unencumbered by breaches or leaky data – because the data itself is secure and providing total transparency into how it’s being used, how it’s interacting with customers, your ecosystem and operations.
As the global attack surface grows every day, and with everyone’s security perimeter now everywhere and anywhere data travels, being resilient takes on far greater importance.
Ask yourself: Is your organization nimble, flexible and elastic enough to:
- Allow data to flow freely across platforms, applications, devices and the cloud– even in hybrid workforce environments – while securely maintaining ownership and full control over how, when, where and with whom your data is shared – forever?
- Enable data to intelligently self-protect itself anywhere, anytime, wherever it goes, under any and all conditions?
- Provide granular, near real-time forensic information with chain of custody built directly into your data throughout its entire lifecycle?
If the pandemic taught us anything, it’s that staying nimble, flexible and elastic by adapting business operations on the fly is possible only if data-centric security is built into IT architecture from the start. Accurately detecting and mitigating security incidents as they arise so that business processes aren’t interrupted while data remains safe from those incidents is the hallmark of a cyber resilient business.
Isn’t it time to re-think your cyber resilience playbook – one the gives you total control of your data’s destiny, forever, yet is both elegant and simple to execute?
We can help rewrite your playbook. Let’s start with a one-on-one conversation about the data security problems that you need to solve for your organization.
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Up next in this four-part series, reimagining a resilient cyber future.
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T.J. Minichillo is Keyavi’s chief information security officer (CISO) and VP of cyber threat & intelligence. He is a nationally renowned cybersecurity and intelligence expert, helping to detect and thwart many of the world’s significant cyber threats. He has held strategic intelligence roles in financial services, the military and energy, including global head of threat intelligence at both National Grid and Morgan Stanley, deputy director at Citigroup’s Cyber Intelligence Center, chief cyber intelligence officer at Merrill Lynch, and senior intelligence special agent at the Department of Defense. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.