editor’s question
BHARAT MISTRY,
PRINCIPAL
SECURITY
STRATEGIST,
TREND MICRO
T
he Chief
Information
Security Officer
(CISO) didn’t even
exist as little as
five years ago and
the role continues
to evolve at a rapid pace in response
to the changing threat landscape. As
security becomes an increasing area of
importance in every aspect of business,
these are some key things that CISOs
must prioritise in 2019.
For example, a few years ago, most
business units were asking what could be
put in the cloud but today the question
has entirely shifted to what can’t.
There has been a substantial increase
in the adoption of cloud technologies,
as enterprises move away from
traditional data centres to more agile
cloud-based platforms.
Coupled with this is a cultural change
away from siloed development,
28
operations and security teams towards a
DevOps culture.
Going into 2019, CISOs need to make
sure security does not get left behind
and guide security teams to develop
their operating practices, mind-sets
and skillsets.
Meanwhile, CISOs will be searching
for the next generation of security
professionals to support these efforts,
with programming skills a core
requirement, however this may prove
challenging owing to the increasing
skills shortage.
Of course, we must also acknowledge
the GDPR in the room. CISOs can
expect further tightening of regulatory
pressures going into the new year, and
data protection and privacy will continue
to dominate boardroom discussions.
It’s also likely that The EU’s ePrivacy
Regulation (ePR) will to come into play in
2019. This safeguards the confidentiality
of any data involved in electronic
communications, as well as the devices
it came from.
It has the same territorial scope as GDPR
and carries an identical penalty regime
for non-compliance. CISOs will need to
ensure that their organisations have the
CISOs need to make
sure security does
not get left behind
and guide security
teams to develop
their operating
practices, mind-sets
and skillsets.
detailed level of understanding and the
right processes in order to comply with
these continuing regulatory changes.
From a threat perspective, CISOs can
expect credential stuffing attacks to
rise and they will become increasingly
difficult to spot. Previously, defenders
have been able to spot patterns of
multiple failed logins from the same
IP address ranges in a short period of
time, so have been able to mitigate the
threat. However, what we are seeing
now is attackers using tools that spread
out the requests and can implement
‘low and slow’ approaches to go under
the radar. Having the necessary skills
in place to deal with these types of
attacks will be essential.
Additionally, as the use of Machine
Learning becomes more prevalent in
the defender’s toolkit, attackers will
be adopting techniques which evade
detection in order to allow their malware
to run. We’ve seen instances in 2018
with file-less malware and this theme is
set to continue.
CISOs should educate their
organisations on the benefits of
implementing solutions based on
Artificial Intelligence (AI), in order to
combat this ever more challenging
threat landscape.
Issue 09
|
www.intelligentciso.com