CISOs' Cyber War: How Did We Get Here?

I have spent a great deal of time on the front lines of the biggest conflict of our age: the cyber war. In almost 20 years as a security professional, I've reached the conclusion that while we are all fighting the good fight and winning some battles, we are ultimately losing the war.

Like a runner on a treadmill, we are working our hearts out and not getting anywhere. When I tell a CISO "I feel your pain," it's because I have the scars to prove it. It's a thankless, lonely, stressful job, and the kicker is how much we all want to do it well.

Before we can stop fighting battles and start winning this cyber war, we need to understand how it got started. Every company today has some level of technical underpinning, and what makes it all work is software. One of the most powerful attack vectors for IT, therefore, has been software vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities, which can range from simple to fundamental, are intrinsic to every software product in every industry.

We've come to accept software vulnerabilities as part of the package, but the question is why? Why are vulnerabilities part of doing business?

The simple answer is unavoidable: market pressure. Markets are constantly evolving and demanding new ways to work smarter, faster, and more cost effectively. The prize, in terms of market share, often goes to the company that gets there first. As a result, products are sometimes forced out the door before they have gone through thorough testing and quality assurance. In the balance between getting the job done first and getting the job done well, being first usually wins and often wins big.

I believe this is why most software products feature extensive indemnification clauses. If the companies are held blameless for bugs and vulnerabilities, the benefit to shipping early can outweigh the risk — at least for the software company. Of course, we as CISOs often end up on the losing end of that proposition.

Another issue is security industry vendors. In an environment fraught with threats, there is money to be made by selling a solution to the problem — whether the product actually performs as promised or not. Promises are easily cloaked in the latest assortment of buzzwords, while the real-world capabilities may not really appear (or not appear at all) until someone is banging on your door.

Although it might be easy enough to blame the situation on simple greed, I believe that many of these issues stem from the fact that the security vendors are not themselves CISOs, nor do they always have a CISO on staff. They do not know the issues CISOs face; they only know what their product does in a sometimes-constrained scenario. And if you only have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

Regulations can further complicate the problem. I believe strongly in the aim of today's cybersecurity regulations, but like the security products themselves, they can often lag behind the real world that CISOs live in. Complying with these regulations can create busywork that diverts our attention and resources from implementing meaningful controls to working on stuff that provides little, if any, benefit. (Antivirus software on my mainframe? Really?) Meanwhile, the internal audit process and staff required to maintain compliance often serve to further distract us and prevent us from focusing resources where we really need them.

In the end, however, it is important to step back and look at what is really driving this situation. It's the business. Software products are rushed to market, sometimes before they are well tested, because business demands it. Security products are purchased then found not to perform as promised, because a tactical fix was essential to business uptime. Cyber regulations are instituted to protect the business, but they are often so out of step with reality that they end up draining focus and resources.

The culmination of these issues is an enormous workload that far exceeds the available security resources that exist today. Ask CISOs about their top challenges, and they will tell you that finding and retaining qualified staff is among the greatest. Consequently, we will never be able to tackle these issues with a tactical approach. We must become more strategic.

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