Page 33 - Cyber Warnings

The CISO s New Year s Resolutions for 2017

By Avi Chesla, CEO, empow

Research shows that 90% of New Year’s Resolutions fail. That’s not catastrophic if your goal is
to lose 15 lbs., learn Mandarin, or spend less on lattes. But if you fail to live up to your
Cybersecurity Resolutions, you could end up with the reputational whiplash and consequence
cascade of Yahoo!, the DNC and all the others who fell prey to malicious hacks in 2016.
Fortunately, the resolutions I’m proposing should be relatively simple to keep.

Check them out and join all of us in keeping 2017 a year safe in cyberspace.

I RESOLVE TO SHARE

I’ve been good about posting those cyber-threats facing my organization on threat exchanges.
But in 2017, I will share my actual defense strategies. Is that too revealing? Not really.

By sharing the best defense practices and ensuring a free flow of information between
organizations, the good guys can gain the upper hand.

The hackers are way ahead of us – they share tools, strategies, resources and communicate
like honeybees. We need to take a page from the black hatters and pool our collective know-
how to take back the advantage in this cat and mouse game.

I RESOLVE TO CLEAN UP MY OWN HOUSE

Even in a fantasy world in which we “air-gap” all our critical networks, I still won’t be protected
from insider damage. This threat is real and hugely underestimated – think Edward Snowden.

Organizations need to properly invest in defense strategies that help detect and investigate
suspicious insider behavior, before the genie is leaked from the bottle.

I RESOLVE TO BE TOUGHER ON THIRD PARTY VENDORS

Because an organization’s security is only as strong as its weakest link. Which means if my third
party vendors don’t have similarly robust protection,

I might as well be leaving my front door wide open… and the windows too.

The recent US Navy breach and the 2014 Target hack were the result of such weak links in the
chain.

33 Cyber Warnings E-Magazine January 2017 Edition
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