CIO & CISO LONDON, UK

A Holistic Approach to Cybersecurity

In the age of digital transformation, businesses are evolving faster than ever. An  ever-growing list of applications are being deployed that may run on any number of clouds, while nascent technologies such as the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence are becoming important aspects of many business’s competitive strategies. CISOs must take lead in this transformation process to help balance the risks of new digital technologies with their potential benefits.

In the past, effective cybersecurity strategies primarily relied on defensive processes and technologies. But as the boundaries of the network have become blurred with the proliferation of mobile devices and connectivity virtually everywhere, cybersecurity has become far too complex to rely on defensive solutions alone. Instead of the traditional firewall, what may be required is more of an immune system that responds to threats as they emerge and addresses any ill effects before they severely weaken the business as a whole.

Since attacks are inevitable, CISOs must be proactive to ensure their organizations are prepared. By focusing on alignment throughout the organization to build an understanding of how the whole system is connected, weak points can be addressed and processes improved before serious threats do long-term damage.

Panel Questions:

1. How can security leaders effectively collaborate with operational leaders to create better outcomes for the organization?
2. How can security leaders enable innovation without creating new security vulnerabilities?
3. What are the best practices and tools to assess your organization’s overall risk profile?

Cyber Security Issues / Cyber Threats

Cyber risk is only increasing as the business landscape continues to evolve toward a model of more digital interaction. Digital business components such as cloud, mobile, social, big data, and IoT are all part of the new cyber risk landscape that CISOs must manage. Balancing how to protect the organization while keeping every aspect of the business effectively running is perhaps the key issue for CISOs today.

Learning Outcomes

• Understanding the evolving threat landscape
• Why its important to have a robust and flexible security approach
• Insights on how to manage threats

Risk Management

There are a variety of risks inherent to the modern IT landscape. The increased use of digital data requires a determination of what information assets, networks, and systems are critical to the business. Increased sophistication from malicious third parties requires rigorous security protocols that keep systems and software up-to-date. Increased reliance on vendors for data collection, transfer, and storage requires controls in place to protect information. Businesses must include risk management within their overall strategic vision to ensure business continuity and effective incident response so that if systems do go down they can be brought back online quickly.

Learning Outcomes

• How to identify the primary risk management needs within your organization
• Strategies to manage the impact posed by the risk of security breaches
• How to establish internal controls over system and network access to manage the risk of internal threats

Ethical Hacking

New threats to IT security are multiplying every day. Ethical hacking, or penetration testing, is a critical need for organizations in order to understand where security vulnerabilities may exist so that weak points can be corrected and sensitive data is prevented from being stolen or misused by malicious third party attackers. To fully protect a system, it is not enough to simply wall the system off. Proactive testing should be a key element of every organization’s security strategy as well.

Learning Outcomes

• Understand the main differences between an ethical hacker and a malicious hacker
• Understand the main responsibilities of an ethical hacker
• Understand the benefits of hiring an ethical hacker to test your organization’s security vulnerabilities