Highlights from CEO Gil Shwed’s Quora session

This week, our founder and CEO Gil Shwed participated in a fascinating Q&A session on Quora. He answered the Quora community’s top questions on cyber security, mobile security and innovation.

Here are our editor’s pick highlights from his session.

What will the field of cybersecurity look like in the next 10 years?

In the coming 10 years, nation sponsored organizations will continue to develop cyber-attack technologies for defense and offense; financially driven criminal groups will continue to seek ways to monetize cyber-attacks; hacktivists will continue to use cyber to convey their messages; terrorist groups will also shift to cyber space; and finally – people with no apparent motive, who seek to demonstrate their technical skills, will continue “contributing” to attacker ecosystem.

Another challenge we will encounter in cyber defense is that unlike the physical world, where we kind of know who our potential adversaries are and what “weapons” they use, in cyber space anyone could be our enemy. We are accessible from every point of the globe, and it was already demonstrated that any attacker can have access to “strategic weapons” that don’t require the infrastructure or the cost of conventional weapons. Last but not least, many cyber-attacks are run automatically by “bots” that scan the entire network and find the weakest spot, so we won’t need to look like an “attractive target”. We simply need to have a vulnerable point. Yes, we are all targets.

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What are the unique challenges of keeping mobile devices secure?

IMHO, mobile devices are the biggest and probably the most ignored threats that exist today.

Mobile devices have become an inseparable part of our everyday lives. We take them with us everywhere we go, and use them for most of our digital activity, from exchanging emails to taking pictures, working, and even paying bills and accessing our bank accounts.

For example, attackers can record user’s activities and conversations, access contact lists and call records, steal private pictures, and spy on the user’s exact location.

In addition, users install far more apps on mobile devices than they do on ordinary computers. While on computers most of the user’s activity takes place on the browsers and a set of well-known software, on mobile devices the vast majority of the activity is executed by apps installed on the device itself, and they vary greatly. By installing apps directly to the device, and granting them extensive permissions, users open a much wider attack surface, in which hackers can operate at ease.

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How can organizations and regular users close the cyber security skills gap?

In today’s cyber-security market, the scarcity of skilled cyber security professionals is an acute concern. Together with every organization’s need to use the most advanced cyber security technologies to protect itself, it is also vital to have cyber experts who fully understand this rapidly changing landscape.

Cyber security experts are becoming more and more essential to organizations – both to determine the right cyber-security strategy, but more importantly in the process of monitoring and responding to incidents if and when they occur.

Customers I meet with also share their concern of this resource gap, and I see companies accommodating in multiple ways. So what can be done to close this gap?

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We invite you to read the full Quora Session for even more of Gil Shwed’s insights.