Time for some good news in Cyber Security

Why are there so few “feel good” stories about cyber security?  Almost daily, we’re warned about a new zero-day exploit or told of another organization that has been compromised by the bad guys.  We all have a tendency to wonder if we’ll ever get ahead?  We will and we are! There’s great things happening in cyber security and it’s time we focus on the good news!

To be fair, we’re in a profession where we keep the scoreboard hidden from the spectators.  Many of us in security live our professional lives behind closed doors and our day to day activities are cloaked in secrecy.  Often the only face time we get with those in the C-suite is when something has gone horribly wrong but here’s food for thought; for every high profile breach there are a thousand other organizations that thwarted one.  We are ever closing the gap as a more smart people enter the field and we identify and perfect our best practices. I take comfort see these numbers grow daily.

Cyber security professionals are doing amazing things and we ARE making incredible advances in protecting our networks from our adversaries.  Fact is, we got out of the gates really late and the competition has a wide lead on us but we’re learning every day and we're closing in.  We're learning, we're getting smarter, and we're going to catch up!

We have learned a lot about what not to do but we can, and do,  learn a great deal more from those who are doing things right.  By focusing on the positive and opening a new dialogue that includes the creative, intelligent, and resourcefulness of the many brilliant people on our side, we can focus our attention on what defensive measures really work and apply them where they are most effective. 

Red Sky asked organizations to share their good news with us and describe their successes so we could share them with others – the results were very compelling!  In our whitepaper, “How Great Companies Fight Targeted Attacks and APT” we documented the responses we received from organizations from very mature incident response teams.  There were many different approaches, but what we discovered was almost all had seven fundamental actions in common.  We concluded that if executed well, any organization can be equally effective in protecting themselves from the bad guys.  If you want to know how you stack up, see how to get a copy of this whitepaper below.

With full intention of focusing on the positive, we found that organizations were more eager to share their successes where they were more reluctant to share their failures.  Every day, I have the privilege of seeing the positive in action.  Whether it be one organization sharing threat intelligence with the Red Sky community or another organization lending assistance to a less experienced incident response team – I can’t help but seeing a tide of good news building in cyber security!    

I challenge you to take the time and focus on the positive things that are happening in cyber security.  What actions have you or your organization taken that has had positive results?  How can you build upon those successes and do you share them with others?  I bet if you do, you’ll find there is an abundance of good news!

If you’re interested in our whitepaper, “How Great Companies Fight Targeted Attacks and APT”, interested in the positive things we’re doing in Red Sky, or simply want to share your good news with our membership, please reach out to me at rgamache@redskyalliance.org  

BT BT

The response to our opening of Wapack Labs in Manchester, New Hampshire has been an extremely positive one!  Focusing on digital forensics, Wapack Labs is a fully functional data forensics laboratory specializing in computer, network, and cell phone investigations.

If you have a need for court admissible reporting and digital forensics work for employee misuse, non-compete violations, network intrusion, intellectual property theft, and copyright infringement cases please reach out to our lab’s lead forensics analyst, Derek Kirmes at dkirmes@wapacklabs.com or read his blog at http://wapacklabs.blogspot.com/ Derek has put together a really good post this week about the problems that may occur when an employee leaves your organization!