The Cyber Why: What We Read This Week...
The Cyber Why: What We Read This Week...
... and why you should too! (4/19/24)
This week in TCW: Altitude Cyber drops it’s Q1 2024 state of cybersecurity market report and it’s a MUST READ. We throw a flash bang into the room and suggest that fixing 0-day flaws, while required, doesn’t really move the needle and we take a dive into the “security data fabric” that is the brick and morter of AI-driven cyber. We offer a bit of unfiltered self help discussion (always a fan favorite), and finally debate the concept of AI generated TV and what it will mean to society at large. All that and I even use the word en-shitification this week in The Cyber Why!
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Top Market Report - MUST READ, 5+ STARS
Q1 2024 Cybersecurity Market Review (Altitude Cyber)
One of the most robust cybersecurity market analysis reports dropped this week. Dino Boukouris and the team at Altitude Cyber provide for your reading please the Q1 2024 Cybersecurity Market Review Report. The overall themes and takeaways include a positive uptick in cybersecurity deal making, a larger than normal rate of major M&A activities, and even later stage financing is making a comeback. This report takes a look at all of the moves being made in cybersecurity including calling out some of the top companies that made the RSA Innocation Sandbox for 2024. Go take a look at the entire list but I’d like to directly hype up a couple of my favorites, specifically RAD Security and Vulncheck. These two companies provide interesting and unique value propositions to their customers that really can’t be found anywhere else - and that’s saying something in today’s overly crowded product landscape. Finally, here are a couple of my favorite chart from the report - I HIGHLY recommend you load this article up and at a minimum look through all of the amazing pictures!
0-Day Vulnerabilities - Do They REALLY Matter?
Cisco Duo's Multifactor Authentication Service Breached (Dark Reading)
PuTTY crypto bug exposes private keys, may lead to supply chain attacks (Risky Biz News)
Palo Alto Networks Discloses More Details on Critical PAN-OS Flaw Under Attack (The Hackers News)
This week in security: Putty keys, libarchive, and Palo Alto (Hackaday)
Maybe it’s a function of my age. Maybe I am just a jaded old security guy who has been around the scene too long to worry about issues such as these any more. Don’t get me wrong — the PAN-OS bug is seeing active exploitation, the Putty flaw opens up all sorts of crypto risk, and Cisco’s Duo problem could certainly lead to major issues at enterprises world wide. However, I no longer get excited when the latest 0-day drops and everyone flies into a risk induced tizzy. I guess the vibe really comes from the fact that as an industry, cybersecurity still can’t handle the low hanging fruit let alone have the capability and resources to mitigate the risk that comes from some crazy advanced crypto issue or a supply chain risk that compromised some very important data. Maybe I’m analyzing this completely the wrong way (highly likely!) I guess I’m looking for more root cause fixes as opposed to bandaids that solve a point in time problem such as the latest vulnerabilities.
Someone out there please help me get back to the time when finding new vulnerabilities was interesting and that solving these problems really did make the world a better place. Right now I feel like it’s similar to shooting down a massive drone attack with a single slingshot. You might get one or two but you certainly won’t stop the onslaught. Put your discussion comments below….
Once Upon a Security Data Fabric
The Security Data Fabric Shift Explained: Why Zscaler Paid $350M for Avalor And What It Means For The Security Industry (The Cybersecurity Pulse)
Palo Alto Networks - A Play For The Future (The Cyber Why)
The Next Era of Cyber Security Capabilities (The Cyber Why)
As we progress through 2024, large public cybersecurity behemoths are all triangulating to the next era of cybersecurity offerings. I’ve written about this topic several times over the last year, most recently in the abovementioned pieces. This week, Darwin Salazar wrote a great piece about ZScaler's acquisition of Avalor. His commentary echoes my views almost identically regarding the AI-backed cybersecurity future being painted by Palo Alto Networks, Crowdstrike, Cisco/Splunk, and now ZScaler. Large-scale, contextual, data-driven, AI-analyzed cybersecurity platforms are coming, and they will be glorious! Darwin did a great job summarizing the impact of the Avalor acquisition in the quote below. Read the original article for additional deep-thought specifics.
In the past couple of years, we’ve seen vendors double down on contextualizing security issues, because without context, everything is seemingly on fire all the time and security teams struggle with deciding what to prioritize. I’m a firm believer that Wiz has eaten much of PANWs market share due to their attack path analysis and other contextual features. Without data infra to support cross-pollination of data sources, it’s nearly impossible to add context to security issues. This is why the Avalor acquisition gives Zscaler an upper hand in the near-term.
Your Self-Help Corner of the Week
Stop Searching For Work/Life Balance- What’s Important Is To Be Present (Forbes)
I don’t usually include content around work/life balance, mental health, and recommendations on remaining present in a chaotic and busy world. However, when I do, I almost always get positive feedback from the audience. I wonder if the nature of what we do as cybersecurity people makes this type of discussion more difficult and simultaneously more needed. For this particular summary, it doesn’t matter why these kinds of articles resonate as long as you find a sliver of information you can learn from and hopefully improve with. The info-nugget I walked away with from this article was a potential reframing of the concept of work/life balance. The author is indirectly incepting the idea that attempting to balance your work and personal life may not be the best option for your mental health. It might be more of a function of remaining present in every moment that can bring happiness to the breadth of activities that must be accomplished on any given day.
Whether you need better balance or are learning the ability to be happy with the imbalance of your current life, this article provides a few ideas on how to achieve a better state of being. Enjoy and namasté!
AI Generated Pure Trash TV
The Dystopian Future of TV Is AI-Generated Garbage (404 Media)
The en-shitification of television content has begun. I don’t know if this type of garbage qualifies as television anymore. After reading the article, I am not even convinced that television as a media will exist in even remotely the same way once AI has its way with the content. In a nutshell AI-generated content is beginning to take over the streaming media space and appears to be dumbing down the value while shooting out pure garbage in a volume attempt at success. Although, I have to admit I don’t think AI generated garbage content could get quite as bad as the latest season of Keeping Up With The Kardashians.. I mean that is pure trash TV and it’s “real”.
Quick Hits and Hidden Gems
MGM Resorts sues FTC, agency chair over cyberattack investigation (Las Vegas Review-Journal) - MGM sued the FTC because the FTC commissioner was on MGM's property during the attack, making her a witness, not a prosecution leader. That just got spicey!
You can't teach someone to swim when they're drowning (Resilient Cyber). Chris Hughes does it again with his take on secure by design and why it’s important “by the numbers.”
Cisco debuts new AI-focused security system after $28 billion deal to buy Splunk (CNBC) - Cisco and Splunk team up to launch HyperShield. Their attempt to remain relevant in the new cyber-AI era. I’m not buying this one yet.
Police take down $249-a-month global phishing service used by 2,000 hackers (CNN) - 2000+ hackers sign up for your illicit services, and the most you can get is 1.5M$. Sounds like bad business to me. Too much risk for not enough reward.
Building platforms in cybersecurity: select playbooks for growing “best of suite” solutions (Venture in Security) -
does it again. Great piece from Ross on build vs buy and other difficulties in platform building in Cyber.
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