CISO MAG - Cyber Security Magazine & News Looking Back on the year in Cybersecurity | Page 6

VOLUME 3 ISSUE 11
BUZZ
BUZZ
A
round
October
VOLUME 3 ISSUE 11
BUZZ
BUZZ
or
November, we throw
the collective fortune
darts at the nearest
board, wall, or screen
to work out how the following year’s
going to be in our electronic world.
We’re the digital equivalent of the
Farmers’ Almanac.
Rates of ransomware attacks will fall (Kiuwan)
I’m going to say this hasn’t been the case, and even if it can be found that the
actual number of attacks in a country has decreased, then the effects and overall
challenges with the attacks has significantly increased, especially in the case of
many local, state, and government agencies, let alone the school districts and
healthcare facilities. If you look at the statistics being quoted around the “every
Yet, how often have we really taken 14 seconds a business falls victim to a ransomware attack” we’re NOW down to 11
a look back and worked out how seconds, so this one’s been solidly sunk and we still have to deal with ransomware
accurate we’ve been? How often do and all $11 billion worth of damages.
we look over our shoulder and assess
our success rate and possibly how to
improve our accuracy?
So, this year, instead of grabbing the
6
nearest intern, developer, or passing
user and practicing the art of extispicy
like haruspices on them to work out
what we’re going to be looking at in
2020, we’re going to take a look back at
some of the 2019 predictions and have
a little dig around the Internet to see
how well the prognosticators faired.
If one of these predictions is yours
or you were the one who copied
it, rebranded it, and made it your
company’s, then accept the criticism
AI will be a major force in information security
(multiple sources for both defense and attack)
Ok, this one’s partly true, but unfortunately not in the way we really want to see it.
Marketing, sales, and all companies that blink in the night have taken up the cry of
“AI will save us!”. As far as the eye can see, it’s a forest of AI marketing, explaining
how their solution’s going to solve your problems and cook you breakfast in the
morning, and most of it is utter codswallop. At best they’ve created an augmented
system of pattern matching rules and assume the recommendations can now be
called AI. We won’t even talk about their training models, their update capabilities,
or understanding of how to scale and justify an ROI based on cost savings or
increased maturity on the security scale. Please do right by all of us, stop throwing
good money after bad and really dig into any AI solution to see what actually
makes it tick and remember: all that glitters is not gold.
and be a little more careful with how
you read this coming year’s entrails, as
there are now consequences. You will
be held responsible!
So, without further ado, let’s start with
some of the cringe worthy ones:
CISO MAG | December 2019
CISO MAG | DECEMBER 2019
7