June 29, 2017 2 Comments
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Collaboration

Collaboration at #CLUS, Day 3 Wrap: Thinking about Security

I may be on the collaboration team, but the security stuff always fascinates me. The stats around cyber crime are mind melting. Today’s keynote focused on security, which is always a timely topic, but even more so today.

A few stats from our chief security officer, John Stewart:

  • Almost 2 of every 5 executives Cisco interviewed has stopped a project because of security. Some projects are restarted after a delay, others are abandoned.
  • Cisco analyzes and reanalyzes 10 terabytes a day on a 3 petabyte data array — way more than I can count on my fingers.
  • Cisco finds and protects against 2 million pieces of malware per day and blocks 20 billion problems each day — about three for every single person on earth.

“It is exceedingly clear that digital, IoT, and everything about business transformation has happened right now as we have lived, in our careers,” Stewart said. “It’s no longer about technology being fascinating or interesting, it’s about technology being everything we need to keep going through life.

Narrowing the security world to Cisco Live, the team’s analysis shows that malware and phishing are the biggest issues here at the conference. And as of this morning, 46 terabytes of traffic had crossed the network since Cisco Live started four days ago.

In 2002, it took businesses an average of 145 days to realize they’d been hit by a cyber attack. In 2017, it still takes most businesses 100 days to realize they’ve been hit. Cisco can now do it in three and a half hours. As Stewart says, that’s still too long. The target is one hour, but it gets harder every day as attacks get more sophisticated.

“We’ve come to the point where we rely on technology. That’s why we have to get security right — so we can keep doing it.”

John Stewart, CSO, Cisco

Stewart interviewed Theresa Payton, former CIO of the White House, now CEO of Fortalice Solutions, on stage. A lot of her message centered around thinking about security differently. In fact, assume it will fail.

“I don’t care how good they are,” she says. “If you assume they all fail you, then you behave differently about how you store your data.”

She went through the example of when you go on vacation: park a car in the driveway, hold the mail and newspapers, put lights on timers. But what about your valuables? If you assume your security will fail, you’ll take precautions like hiding things throughout the house or in safes. Or, she says, “you can choose to leave it right by the front door — because you’re safe.”

“Why do we do that with our data?” she asked. “Just assume that everything will fail you. Even the best and brightest security teams will accidentally fail you. So if you do that, when that breach happens, they won’t be able to move laterally across your network. They’re not going to get it all.”

Learn more about Cisco IoT Threat Defense, launched this week.

Collaboration happenings on Thursday

Mystery solved
If you’ve ever wondered what I look like on a Cisco Spark Board, now you know. (I’m the one on the left with the scribbly hair.)

Customer Appreciation Party
Who needs words when you have photos, right? We did our best to fill the T-Mobile arena to have all sorts of fun and leave most of the week’s acronyms behind for a few hours. The hats were blinky and Bruno Mars kept the energy up, up, up.

Catch up with what happened during Day 1 and Day 2 of the show.

Collaboration case study: The Steadman Clinic
And for your viewing enjoyment, a video about how Colorado’s Steadman Clinic is using Cisco Spark to change the way its doctors communicate with each other and with patients.