Experts and Analyst Comment on Recent Security Breaches for
National Cybersecurity Month
Scott
Sacknoff of the SPADE Defense Index, Cybersecurity experts, Kiersten Todt &
Roger Cressey, Gino
Pereira, CEO of NXT-ID and Scott
L. Greiper, of Secure Strategy Group Share Insight
New York NY- Point Roberts WA - October 16, 2014 - Investorideas.com
(www.investorideas.com), a global
news source covering leading sectors including cybersecurity and biometrics, issues
commentary from industry experts and analysts on recent security breaches (including
Home Depot and JP Morgan) as National
Cybersecurity Month drives even more awareness to the issue.
October 2014 marks the 11th
Annual National Cyber Security Awareness Month, sponsored by the Department of
Homeland Security, in cooperation with the National Cyber Security Alliance and
the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center.
Scott Sacknoff of the
SPADE Defense Index (NYSE: ^DXS) said looking at stocks in the sector, “With
increasing publicity related to network attacks, an increasing number of
companies are increasing their cybersecurity investments to be proactive rather
than responsive to attacks. The proof of this trend can be seen as
cybersecurity companies report gains in the size of their customer base as well
as growth in the contracts awarded by the large, S&P100-type firms. One can
expect firms such as Palo Alto Networks (PANW), FireEye (FEYE), Cyber-Ark
Software (CYBR), Barracuda Networks (CUDA), and Fortinet (FTNT) to be among
those that should benefit.”
Scott L. Greiper,
President of Secure Strategy Group, LLC. told us, "The growing list of
big-name hacking victims will support the broad secular growth being enjoyed by
many companies in the cyber security sector. Our SSG Small Cap Homeland Security Report for
the first half of 2014 documents the strong performance of small caps in this
sector. We anticipate growth will continue as the cyber threat and related
legal concerns are taken seriously by more and more enterprises, especially
small and medium companies. To be sure,
market participants need to step carefully given the presence of some inflated
valuations and shifting technology requirements that can have rapid and
significant impacts on certain providers.”
Cybersecurity experts,
Kiersten Todt & Roger Cressey, Liberty Group Ventures commented, “National
Cybersecurity Month has been dominated by news reports of successful attacks in
cyberspace. Millions of accounts,
addresses, names, phone numbers, and other valuable data have been stolen. Recent high profile cyber breaches into Home
Depot and JP Morgan, in particular, have demonstrated the diverse and pervasive
threats that businesses face. What are
some of the key lessons from these significant breaches?
Corporate board members
are now being held responsible and accountable for breaches. Corporate leaders must view Cyber risk as a
risk equal to credit, liquidity, and operational risks. Assessing risk is an enterprise-wide
endeavor, not merely a department, division, or company activity. The
complexity of cybersecurity interdependencies is a growing challenge for
companies to understand and manage.
Recent corporate breaches also reflect an increased diversification of
threat actors who have significant capabilities and have exposed the difficulty
in discerning whether a cybersecurity adversary is a nation-state or a
sophisticated criminal organization. Companies should assume they are targets
of a complete range of adversaries and intentions.
Employee behavior is a
primary corporate vulnerability – spearphishing remains the primary way
adversaries can infiltrate a network. Educating employees is the foundation of
effective corporate cybersecurity and is often neglected. Private organizations should not expect the
government to identify threats first; information sharing between the public
and private sectors is essential to maintaining security and companies must
commit to continually improving methods for information sharing.
Every company can learn
from past breaches and apply the best practices and lessons learned upon which
industry and government have agreed. One
tool that companies have already begun to use effectively to manage cyber risk,
enterprise-wide, is the application of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework. In light of the recent court ruling requiring
companies to take “reasonable efforts” on cybersecurity, application of the
NIST Framework can be viewed as doing so.
No company can stop every
cyber threat to its organization; companies will continue to be breached and
the adversaries will continue to be more creative and opportunistic in finding
vulnerabilities to exploit. Tools and
technologies that help organizations more effectively manage cyber risk will
become essential for companies to prosper in the current threat environment.“
Gino Pereira, CEO of NXT-ID (NASDAQ: NXTD) said, “Companies need to approach cyber
security from a holistic standpoint. Personnel, hardware and software all play
a role. Authentication is a major factor. Passwords have been proven to be
ineffective and biometrics are increasingly being used as a means of
authentication of personnel. Authentication should also rely on at least
two factors to allow access. Behavior of staff with access to sensitive
information needs to be monitored. Do
they have outside internet access? Can
their behavior invite breaching attacks? Companies should also look at keeping
sensitive information in an encrypted format. Here at NXT-ID, we are developing technologies
that not only require dual authentication for access control but also dynamic
pairing codes that change for each enquiry, making it very difficult for
attackers to gain access to sensitive information.”
National Cyber Security
Awareness Month is designed to engage and educate public and private sector
partners through events and initiatives with the goal of raising awareness
about cybersecurity and increasing the resiliency of the nation in the event of
a cyber incident.
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