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Security-threats? Don’get scared or scarred

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Pratima Harigunani
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Everyone has a plan till they get punched in the face, as a legendary boxer rightly warned

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MUMBAI, INDIA: For Mike Sentonas who is at the helm of threat landscape as VP & World Wide CRO Security Connected, McAfee, security is neither an illusionary fort that can’t be broken into nor the false coziness of the sand that an ostrich’s head is safely tucked into. When he says that statistically, threats are inevitable, you know he is not the one to paint fictitious assurances but instead means to sketch a firm, unrelenting and practical scenario. That ironically allows him to still repose confidence in CIOs and CISOs that security is not some elusive mirage. The right posture and ability to withstand minor wounds can indeed make it possible to face reality on the chin even if you are a Southpaw. We discover the game of an ever-shifting threat landscape (and some recent knock-outs the world has witnessed) with this nail-biting ring-side view and Mike alongside.

Have the contours of threats and how people are equipping themselves against them changed? Specially from where you see and interact with firms?

The conversations have changed for sure and I can see the change because I get to interact and observe this space with a lot of people. In the past it was all about emerging threats but today people want to be sure of ‘where am I exposed’ or ‘where I could be attacked’. Today people need to be prepared for being compromised and still fight back.

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Technology is supposed to be a big part of the answer and yet of late we have seen names like Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo, Zendesk Hack and many more coming in vulnerable spots with some big attacks. What do you make of this irony?

Yes, and the last few days were about Home Depot incident which was bigger than the Target breach. One aspect could be the ease with which attackers crawl into networks. Sophistication keeps moving ahead and products need to be constantly capable of taking care of new kind of attacks. It also relates to breakdown in processes, lack of skills and right people.

Mobility is on a surge and at whizzing speeds. Do you enjoy the debate between a closed and hence supposedly-more-secure Ios Vs. other options like Android when it comes to mobile malware?

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A lot has been changing in the mobility space and we still have not seen major attacks. Growing use of portables and smart phones will signal more complex form of attacks. We may start to see a new slew of issues and every category would show vulnerability. The ‘how’ is irrelevant and it is time to think in terms of the entire framework and not just the device. More so as mobile is an always-on, portable medium so makes for an attractive target.

In that sense how acute is the state of consumer-side of cloud options with this new breed of drives and boxes?

There are a couple of dynamics at play here. One part is about network which can become more porous and on the other hand there is convenience that people like to have. Corporate information is moving out with new entry and exit points here and with people-aspects added to that. So enterprises should be aware of this change. Interestingly massive cyber-attacks have happened often at places with big security budgets and many people focusing on security while they miss on small gaps and isolated information spots.

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All the hype around IoT (Internet of Things) should also lead to worries on security front with the surface area available for attackers suddenly exploding by a huge number. Or should it not?

Technology is evolving at such a fast pace that being ready for security with the same acceleration is challenging. If we go by the forecasts of many billion devices made for IoT by 2020, this trend is moving at unprecedented rates. This would mean a big number of devices with need for built-in security just the way a lot of wearables or health-capture devices need to be armed for security. Unless they are strong and immune that way, there is an accident waiting to happen.

DMARC for emails, FIDO protocols or Biometrics; it seems that standards and regulation is also changing a lot these days. Your observations.

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Yes and they are going in the right direction. It is always tough to balance and we need more standards, more sharing between countries and more co-operation among regulators, specially as a lot of changes in security world are happening at a brisk speed.

Isn’t it really tough to stay at the edge in this space, with security threat side as a shifting-goal rather than a fixed adversary? How do you ensure your portfolio evolution from that angle?

The core McAfee and the Intel Group strengths are being combined to solve problems of tomorrow. So we are looking at both the problems of today as well as tomorrow. Yes, security changes day by day and that’s why we spend a lot of R&D on new technologies like new-generation firewalls or software-defined data centres etc. For example the McAfee Threat Intelligence Exchange (TIE) has significance to McAfee’s Security Connected vision and gives importance of proactive threat detection and prevention. It covers real time data exchange messaging framework for context sharing and orchestration, collective threat intelligence and adaptive threat prevention. This  is a first in the industry  to orchestrate local and global threat intelligence information and enterprise-wide security products into one cohesive integrated security system and allows organizations to orchestrate security controls to identify patterns, immunize assets against newly-identified malware, and prevent data exfiltration in real-time - optimizing security for each organization.

How can CIOs, CXOs, CISOs chase this goal?

Do not get scared. Just learn. Use these threat episodes as learning points. Statistically, they are inevitable. If big security spends can get compromised then threat for your enterprise is plausible. Do your best to simulate or role play that possibility. Specially, the part of how you would act after a threat. Incident response and recovery is crucial and most people do not pay attention to that stage. Share and be prepared instead of assuming nothing will strike you.