CIO Equifax Game Changer

by admin on September 22, 2017 in Security and Compliance

 

The most recent Equifax Inc. breach has finally brought about a long overdue reassessment among CIOs and IT to reassess the need for new thinking to defend against the relentless and increasingly sophisticated cyber risks to modern corporations. As relayed in the Wall Street Journal “Some measures might seem obvious, although the fact that these steps aren’t being taken is a complex, organizational problem, CIO Journal reports.”

Cybersecurity must be a top priority

No one remembers how dangerous tigers are until they leave their natural habitats. According to a 2016 report by Gartner Inc. technology initiatives such as analytics, cloud services, and infrastructure were cited as spending priorities over cybersecurity.

Standard system updates

“In a far-flung set of companies, it is very hard to identify all applications that may have a vulnerability,” Phil Wiser, chief technology officer of Hearst Communications Inc., told CIO Journal in an email. Application security may be especially in urgent need.

Cybersecurity needs to be seen with information at its center

“CIOs need to shift away from thinking about their environments as infrastructure and think of them as entities that process and store an incredibly valuable commodity,” said Jeff Pollard, principal analyst at Forrester Research Inc.

Attacks will remain ongoing until no value can be gained by them. Regardless of the attacker, a wealth of information remains vulnerable until a fundamental reassessment of how information is protected is made. Everywhere from the Internet of Things to the U.S. SEC have been cyber attacked with information used for monetary gain, and until the cybersecurity paradigm shift occurs these attacks will likely continue.