Spencer Young

Cyber security is supposed to reduce risk and be cost effective at the same time. It’s supposed to take the burden of legwork away from the CISO and his or her team. It’s supposed to reduce the financial and reputational risk posed by malicious actors in an efficient, intelligent manner. What it’s not supposed to do is generate reams and reams of near-to-useless information, burying the security team in an avalanche of flags and alerts. It’s not supposed to make the job of a security analyst close to impossible. We’ve become so obsessed with the idea of cybersecurity rigour –…

What is the value of the data you hold, and how does that justify your security spend? It’s a question that’s increasingly rising to the top of the CIO’s list – not to mention the CISO. As the CISO increasingly moves towards the boardroom, they need to be able to justify their spend to the CEO and shareholders. If security spend has become an indiscriminate affair, with a focus on securing the perimeter at all costs but with no insight into how the company benefits, the financial case for investment is likely to face challenges pretty quickly.  For many years,…

A year ago, it seemed as if you couldn’t open a newspaper or business magazine without encountering the dread letters GDPR. So you’d expect businesses to have heeded the warnings, and implemented the systems and technologies they needed to avoid the swingeing fines applicable under the new regulations. Not a bit of it. In fact, in the first six weeks following the imposition of GDPR, data breaches rose by 160 per cent. Teething troubles? Hardly. Recent research found a big spike in the number of cyberattacks in the year to-date, with 55 per cent of organisations around the world facing…

Much like the rest of the business world, cybersecurity teams are increasingly hearing how AI will revolutionise the way they work – usually for the better. And it’s no longer just hype – recent research from LinkedIn showed that machine learning jobs are on the rise, with over six times as many roles available now as compared with a year ago. AI tasks are moving into the everyday business and security spheres.    The expansion comes with a problem – namely, the need to fill those roles with skilled individuals – and upskill your existing workforce to work with the new technology. The number of skills required to…