One Step Ahead

What are forward-looking CSOs doing to stay beyond the reach of cybercriminals?

Recently, I was in New York City, where I was fortunate enough to have tickets to one of the hottest shows on Broadway: Hamilton. I was fascinated by how precarious the fate of our independence was had it not been for the forward-looking and -acting Alexander Hamilton. If he were around today in the world of cybersecurity, I’m pretty sure he’d be looking at CPU-level sandboxing and identifying innovative ways to out-wile the latest attack strategies that target new, disruptive technologies.

We’ve all heard it before: Preparation is everything. But when it comes to security, it’s not enough. According to the 2015 Check Point Security Report, 81 percent of organizations studied had suffered a data loss incident. And 83 percent had existing bot infections. Not only do top leaders in business today need to think ahead, but they need to act ahead as well. Without staying one step ahead of the attackers, your security infrastructure remains precarious.

So what does staying one step ahead look like? It means you’re:

• One step ahead of malware—Putting CPU-level threat detection in place to catch malware before it can affect the business.
• One step ahead of attackers—Understanding threat trends and patterns. Attackers aren’t signing up for the status quo plan, so why should you?
• One step ahead of the unknown—Setting up your security infrastructure to ensure the best malware catch rate possible.
• One step ahead of emerging technologies—Protecting next-generation data centers, whether traffic is coming in or out or within, as well as mobile devices and other disruptive technologies, to safeguard your organization against malware, advanced persistent threats (APTs) and zero-day attacks.

Ultimately, staying one step ahead means understanding the minds of today’s attackers; learning how emerging technologies that we rely on to be more competitive are opening new areas of vulnerability; and making sure that the defenses in place are advancing not just with the times, but also with the forecasts about where both business and threats are heading.

To hear what experts have to say on staying one step ahead, join CSO and Check Point on Nov. 18 at CyberDay 2015, an exclusive gathering of some of the top minds in the security industry. Oh, and by the way, it takes place in New York—the same town where Hamilton rose from the ranks to make his mark.