WEBINAR Review- “Advanced Threat Protection – Can Technology alone deliver what’s needed?” Patrick Grillo, Senior Director, Security Strategy 1.From my understanding, the objectives of the Webinar is to address the question – “Are the current advanced threat protection solutions technologically suitable to safeguard our online data or they would just wake people up in the middle of night to be shocked by their financial and reputation damages?” To provide a clear answer to the question, the webinar focuses on three main aspects – Technology, Awareness and Advanced Threat Protection. Some real life examples depicting a target’s persona reveal how innocent people are made victims of online breaches. The very beginning of the webinar takes you through the statistics (from ID Theft Resource Center) on the number of breaches in 2015 and 2016 and analyses the probable causes. For example, the year 2015 recorded 781 data breaches and with not even half of the year gone, figures already touched 454 in In fact, the number of data breaches per day in 2016 is greater than what they were in An example of a recorded call from DHL which ended with a massive transfer of $250k to the criminals account is a real time proof of how bad the situation is. The webinar analyzes why aren’t the threat protections that we use today no longer effective and why aren’t the threat protection strategies working anymore? Other than technology, the webinar posits a three pointer reasoning to the existing problem: 1.Too much focus on compliance 2.Too risk based 3. Too many point solutions To overcome the issue, webinar suggests the introduction of a multi-layer, multi-technology solution that features a robust prevention layer and is capable of detecting the illegal activity and can instigate necessary steps to respond to the activity. Such a framework covers three diverse areas namely, Prevention, Detection and Mitigation and when all three areas interconnect to work collaboratively, eliminating the gaps between a security platform becomes easy. Melisa Hathaway (2010), Senior advisor, Cyber security project also recommends that technology and information security must walk together within an enterprise to ensure protection of our most critical asset i.e. information. While improved technology is only part of the solution, enhanced protection needs awareness plus technology. As also proposed by SANS Institute (2012), to enhance awareness in an organization, it is imperative that employees are trained well to detect and deal with such attacks at corporate level. To accomplish this, the webinar proposes a 7-step phishing campaign and recommends threat intelligence to be a top priority for organizations. Here are the seven steps in the same order as in the webinar presentation: 1. Executive support 2. Determine your test platform/vehicle 3. Embrace your inner cybercriminal 4. Set your trap 5. Attack and track 6. Share details of exercise and results 7. Clean the slate and repeat Further, towards the end, the webinar presents a 3-part dissection of the cyber-criminal ecosystem. On top sit the Crime ware Producers, a group of senior developers who do the major source coding followed by packers to evade detection and Junior developers who would just create variants by simple copy pasting. With advanced technology, better awareness and an actionable intelligence plan, we can better position ourselves to overcome data threats in the globalized world. References SANS Institute, (2012). Twenty Critical Security Controls for Effective Cyber Defense, version 4.1. Viewed at 29th October 2013, Hathaway, M. E., (2010). Beyond Availability: Melissa Hathaway on the Cloud. Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School. Viewed at 18 November 2013, Technology Alone Cannot Protect Against Cyber-threatshttp:// Technology Alone Cannot Protect Against Cyber-threats August 18, 2015 Cyber Security, Global Focus, TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION, WORLDCyber SecurityGlobal FocusTECHNOLOGY & INNOVATIONWORLD Book: Foolproof: Why Safety Can Be Dangerous and How Danger Makes Us Safe, October 13, 2015https:// Link to the Webinar: Audio