Attending expos are great. A big part of our roles requires us to keep up to date with the goings-on and innovations in the sectors we operate. But nothing can beat meeting the experts and learning from them.
The Cyber Security and Cloud Expo at Olympia didn’t disappoint. With dozens of cyber professionals, the opportunities to learn were abundant.
Especially as there were plenty of seminars delivered by some of the foremost minds in cyber security and data solutions.
Considering recent reports that cyber-crime has taken a sharp upwards turn, it’s no surprise at all that there was a huge emphasis on active protection rather than the more traditional passive measures.
Although there were plenty of organisations offering some incredible solutions to make organisations more efficient.
We used our time wise, meeting with some of the biggest innovators in the space, as well as some of the more established outfits.
All had their own take and their own solutions and was fascinating to hear their views.
There were plenty of organisations and speakers championing the use of artificial intelligence.
AI I hardly new. Google uses it in abundance. In fact, their DeepMind AI is so advanced is reacts aggressively when put under stressful conditions.
What constitutes stressful for an AI is anyone’s guess.
Facebook’s foray into AI had to be cut short when two AI chatbots started conversing in a language only they understood. Which was a little more Skynet than C3PO than anyone is hoping for.
World ending death machines aside, a number of organisations are using AI to make businesses run more efficiently.
One solution uses AI to consolidate an organisation’s data lakes so information can be retrieved quickly and effectively without the need for code, clicks or clunky navigation.
And it can visualise it all beautifully too.
It’s this kind of technology that moves us away from desktops and more towards Star Trek. Which we’re totally fine with.
On the other side of the AI coin, there are organisations who are leveraging AI to provide real time threat intelligence that can learn as it tackles attacks.
The speed at which threats emerge, rule-based systems can’t keep up. Traditional solutions lack flexibility and can’t compete with high speed, high volume attacks.
This goes for cloud security too.
While many organisations put their faith in Office 365 or GSuite for their day to day business operations, because it shifts the security issue away from their own infrastructure.
Considering that standards in IT network security vary wildly from company to company, this isn’t a bad thing. Although this is only part of the equation.
However, someone needs to protect the cloud servers and that’s where AI solutions come into their own.
A recurring theme throughout the day was human error being a cause for a startling number of problems within networks.
Although not only from organisation employees.
There are always situations where someone clicks on a suspicious attachment without thinking. Or clinking on a link on their personal emails during a lunch break that turns out to be shady.
These things happen. They’re not great but that’s life.
Providing redundancies are in place then these mistakes can be corrected in a relatively short space of time with minimal data loss.
That’s assuming those redundancies are in place. One of the other problems facing the cyber security industry is IT functions who are either starved of cash or lack the knowledge to ensure that networks have the base level of protections and security against critical failures.
Where things get bad is when they’ve also hired the cheapest cyber security professional to carry out vulnerability testing.
They’ll rarely show up anything – either because they’ve not done the job properly or don’t know how to do the job properly. Regardless, the result is the same.
The average business owner will take that as a green flag. No problems mean all is well.
The opposite is often true.
No network is impervious and suggesting that’s the case gives businesses a dangerously false sense of security.
Without clear improvement plans businesses who are already vulnerable leave themselves wide open to attack.
Throw in that cash strapped IT manager and a team of people who could click on any old thing and suddenly the business becomes a ticking virtual bomb.
The challenge is helping businesses see the value in cyber security and hiring a reputable outfit to review and improve their security.
Until that happens money will continue to be wasted paying for services that will achieve nothing. And even more money recovering lost data or rebuilding infrastructure.
As ever the answer is working with the right business, offering the best service the business can afford. If they can’t afford it then it’s the budget that’s too low, not the price point that’s too high.
KDC Resource are expert recruiters in the cyber security field. If you need support with your requirements contact us today and a member of the team will be in touch.
Or if you’re looking for you next role, submit your CV.
