Apocalypse CISO
Synopsis
Continuing the theme from CyberCon 2024 of posing challenges faced by CISOs from the viewpoint of cinematic classics, your presenter delves into his past, because like so many things in life, what is old is new again…”the horror”.
It is September 1st 2006, and a content update has been published by a then global security vendor, an enterprise software powerhouse, no different than most times of the day each day. Only this time this latest ‘virus signature’ contains a particularly unfortunate false positive, an erroneous detection that will detect a critical system file of the world’s most- used server operating system as malware. Within eight hours a new replacement signature is released, yet a further eight days passes before the resolution of the second-waive of consequence is achieved, that at first went unnoticed. Sound familiar?
To quote the then Vice President in charge of this research & development lab: “We play with bombs, sometimes…well, eventually you expect one will explode in your face”. In those days it did make the global tech news, even some business news, but went unnoticed by the mainstream or general public.
On July 19th 2024 something similar occurred with a current global security vendor, however this time in a cloud-based, as-a-Service, IoT-world the impact and reach was fast, heard and felt by millions from Fortune-100s to everyday members of society trying to buy groceries on a Friday evening.
The media began their coverage with much of it pointing the blame at the wrong party, or where more accurate they still filled in the unknowns and gaps with speculation or poor “techie jargon” jokes. Meanwhile impacted organisations began looking to their CISOs and heads of cyber security for a solution…to make it go away, to “terminate with extreme prejudice”.
This session will look at the challenges faced by the role of a CISO with the unenviable task of responding when one of the organisation’s security “levers” breaks in an all too noticeable way. At best simply impacting productivity or at worst grinding all operations to a halt leading to societal impact with anger and fury.
The aim is to have a discussion with the audience on how a CISO may manage a situation no one hopes to experience, but most certainly best prepare for.
In other words, can the CISO find a way to retain the confidence of their organisation, to be trusted to find that balance between managing risk through invasive controls and ensuring availability? Or will they be reduced to an “…errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill”