Threat Intelligence

    Dive in to SecOps Virtual 2022: How Security Operations Has Evolved 
     

    by Susanne Gurman  
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    Key Points

    • Mimecast held its second annual SecOps Virtual conference to offer perspective on security operation orchestration, detection, and response practices.
    • Mimecast CEO Peter Bauer delivered a keynote, and was followed by industry experts Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder and chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator, Stephen Ward, Managing Director of Insights Partners and former CISO of The Home Depot, Carl Baron, CISO of SIG PLC, and Giles Ashton Robe, CISO of FirstGroup Plc.
    • The event is available on demand. 

     

    Mimecast hosted its second annual SecOps Virtual conference to communicate and explore the latest and best security operations orchestration, detection, and response practices. What was delivered did not disappoint. In some instances, it went far beyond SecOps best practices, hitting some of the core issues cybersecurity practitioners face today. It was bolstered by Mimecast’s strategic alliance partners, CrowdStrike, Exabeam, Netskope, Palo Alto Networks, Rapid7, and Secureworks. 

    SecOps Virtual included two CISO panels, a keynote from Dmitri Alperovitch, and much more. The following is a recap of some of the major points of value to encourage you to listen in on the session recordings that are available now through the end of August 2022. 

    Setting the Tone for SecOps: Peter Bauer, CEO of Mimecast  

    A quick, yet powerful message from Mimecast CEO Peter Bauer kicked off the conference. He touched upon how culture and contingencies are the two greatest assets in dealing with uncertainty. 

    The Keynote: Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder and chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator 

    Mimecast was fortunate enough to have Dmitri share his insights from his latest endeavor of joining the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Review Board, as well as provide real-time cybersecurity implications unfolding from the situation in Ukraine. The overall message from Dmitri was speed and vigilance. He empathized, “This has not been an easy year for SecOps professionals.” With all the major global security issues like the SolarWinds hack to Log4J and other ransomware attacks in between, the United States is issuing a “Shields Up” warning for all SecOps professionals to be on high alert. However, Dimitri advised that the real value comes with speed: speed of detection, speed of investigation, and speed of response. Those are the metrics he has used to track how well cybersecurity capabilities are functioning. 

    CISO Panel: Practitioner’s Perspective 

    SecOps Virtual’s CISO panel on the practitioner’s perspective consisted of Stephen Ward, Managing Director of Insights Partners and former CISO of The Home Depot, Carl Baron, CISO of SIG PLC, and Giles Ashton Robe, CISO of FirstGroup Plc. The panelists touched upon today’s skills gap in cybersecurity, employee burnout, and the state of technology/AI to help with both. The panel also discussed budgeting and how process plays a critical role in success or failure, and then finally, provided some words of wisdom. The key takeaways were:

    • Look outside SecOps and the cybersecurity industry for talent. Current expectations are out of line with what is out there. 
    • Adopt technology that’s available vs. build your own. It takes some adapting but it’s better than the alternative.  
    • Examine the shift left concept and question if it may be more appropriate to create a shift middle. 

    SecOps CISO Panel: Vendor’s Perspective

    SecOps Virtual also held a CISO panel during which panelists discussed many of the same topics, but from the vendor’s perspective. This exciting panel discussion featured team members from Mimecast strategic partners Palo Alto Networks, Netskope, Exabeam, Rapid7, and Secureworks.

    Breakout Sessions: There’s Real Value Here

    Finally, there were six separate breakout sessions that showed real-world examples of the power cybersecurity technology API integrations have in alleviating some of today’s most grappling cybersecurity challenges.

    While you may tend to overlook vendor breakout sessions like these because you worry that they are nothing more than 30 minutes’ worth of a vendor pitching their wares, the perspective and insight offered in these SecOps Virtual Breakout Sessions go far beyond showcasing technology and span well into the area of thought leadership. Here are some key facts about these sessions:

    • The cybersecurity environments around the globe this group of vendors collectively have access to is in the hundreds of thousands. How does this benefit you? Think of the meta data, benchmarking, trends, and strategic insights vendors like these can glean from this massive data set.
    • The leadership/subject matter experts at cybersecurity vendors typically are recovering practitioners who felt so compelled to work against threat actors that they left a job in an organization’s in-house cybersecurity team to join the vendor’s fight.
    • Sometimes it’s hard to think that a cybersecurity vendor will know the true grandeur of the challenges an organization’s in-house cybersecurity teams face, but each cybersecurity vendor that participated in these breakout sessions had at least one presenter, if not all presenters, who at one point in their career was a cybersecurity practitioner.

    Don’t underestimate the value these cybersecurity vendor breakout sessions can bring. I hope you enjoy the insights from SecOps Virtual 2022 as much as I did.

     

     

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