At Dynamo18, which was another great event, I was leading on the Cyber breakout session. It was well attended and was an opportunity to let everyone know of our plans for the Cybernorth work stream and the Cyberfest series of events planned for September. Watch out for these.
Rick from Accenture was our main speaker and he talked about present and emerging threats in the market. The arms race between those who need to defend themselves and those who want to attack is quite frightening. Cyber crime is part of the modern world, it won’t go away and we need to encourage businesses to think in terms of resilience as we do with fire or flood.
Rick started with a saying from Mike Tyson – ‘Everyone has a plan ‘till they get punched in the mouth.’ It made me laugh. Time in the ring with Mike Tyson would not be a fair fight but then neither is defending yourself from a cyber attack.
The problem with cyber is that it is not a one on one match. It is you against the world, one against many. There is no copyright on an attack either, if one attack is successful and manages to get into your systems, then others will try to do the same.
The reasons for trying to attack you are numerous and their are growing armies of people with the technical ability and the resources to do so. Everyday the cost of mounting a cyber attack comes down. Such is the way with a free capitalist market.
At the same time, the organisations we are trying to protect get more complex. At one time they were surrounded by walls, with an easily definable boundary, and could defend themselves within their confines. Now our walls are breached. People expect to work from anywhere and what used to be considered as the outside is now inside. There are many more possible points of entry to consider.
Cyber resilience os so much part of modern business life that no one can afford to ignore the risk. This is part of the reason that we are planning #Cyberfest, a series of cyber related events across the NOrth East this September, but that is for another blog or two
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 