I have written up a few articles outlining interesting developments from the recent Infosec Europe event in London – looking at everything from ransomware attacks in the education sector to burnout and scapegoating among CISOs.
Cyber Sugar High
Infosec Europe was like a sweet shop (a candy store to those Americans among us) with shelves stacked with brightly coloured treats. On display was a massive array of cybersecurity products and solutions each addressing a number of different cyber problems. Individually they are fantastic demonstrations of innovation, but collectively they are driving the current cyber complexity problem with too many poorly integrated point solutions.
While there is some consolidation and integration in the cyber arena, it is being outpaced by the proliferation of poor-integrated, point cyber solutions. CISOs and cyber professionals that want to address the full spectrum of threats are drowning in complexity. In an environment where cyber talent is costly and in short supply, having the skills to properly manage all of these tools, let alone integrate them effectively is almost impossible.
As I have written before, cyber complexity has become more of a challenge for many CISOs than the cyber threats themselves. And recent reports by the likes of Gartner have backed up this point. In its ‘Four Myths Obscuring Cybersecurity’s Full Value‘ Gartner identified “More Technology Equals Better Protection” as a particularly common myth.
Overcoming the complexity will require a different approach. Essentially we need security baked in at the device level and common interoperable security standards built in on top of this to enable better integration.
SMBs Getting it right
There are some interesting small businesses (SMBs) driving innovation in this area. I have covered one of them already – ANGOKA, a start-up specialising in securing machine to machine communication that was the winner of the UK’s Most Innovative Cyber SME 2023 contest.
I met a second innovative SMB at Infosec Europe, which has since gone on to win an award as well. Hardware cybersecurity solutions pioneer Flexxon has just been named a winner at the annual World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Global Awards.
I met Sky Chia at Infosec Europe, where he explained how Flexxon’s hardware-based cybersecurity solution – the X-PHY Cybersecure SSD – is the world’s first embedded AI-based security system that can learn, adapt and evolve to cybersecurity threats through machine learning.
This AI-enabled, hardware-based solution provides a last level of protection when all else fails, ensuring that clients have ‘defence in depth’. Overcoming cybersecurity complexity will require an intelligent approach with secured baked in at the device level – exactly what Flexxon’s X-PHY technology provides.
The recent award from WIPO, the intellectual property (IP) agency of the United Nations, at a prestigious award ceremony in Geneva follows a collection of other awards from Cyber Defense Magazine (CDM). Flexxon has also produced Lenovo’s first-ever range of laptops with X-PHY hardware.
