As businesses and world leaders try to answer the latest security threats while also preparing for what lies ahead, working together has never been more important. Cybercrime will cost the world $6 trillion per year by 2021, based on findings by cybersecurity research firm Cybersecurity Ventures and published in an article on Inc.’s website earlier this year. And in 2017 alone, there are 111 billion new lines of software code that need to be secured, according to Cybersecurity Ventures Founder and Editor in Chief Steve Morgan. By 2020, over 20 billion devices will be connected to the Internet, according to Gartner. The growing scope of cybersecurity threats is staggering, and will only grow more substantial over the next five years. The only way we can address this threat is through collaboration.
Security Through Sharing
Since its founding in January of 2017, CTA has successfully brought together 14 members to share threat intelligence on a regular basis. Our automated platform enables companies to easily share data at network speed and at scale. In turn, the platform allows our members to reduce the detection-to-deployment lifecycle to a few hours. As a result, we are beginning to realize our goal of preventing and disrupting intrusions, attacks, and other malicious activity. It’s bringing value not only to individual member companies but also to the industry as a whole. When it comes to cyber intelligence, the more data you have the better your decisions can be. Access to data enables security teams to identify threats as they are emerging and respond quickly when they do. We’ve made this idea a core mission at CTA, and in the last eight months, we’ve made great strides in bringing companies together to make the internet more secure.
What’s To Come: Collaborating to Stop the Next Cyber Attack
This kind of collaboration is key as the industry looks ahead to the daunting security issues we’ll face in the coming years. For example, supply chain risks have become top-of-mind for most companies in light of the WannaCry attacks. Many breaches originate in the supply chain, making it critical to safeguard against vulnerabilities brought in by vendors and suppliers. As more and more devices in homes and businesses connect to the Internet of Things, this Wi-Fi connected tech could pose a major security threat in the coming years. Companies and security leaders alike must collaborate to make sure new IoT products are secure.
This year, we have already seen extreme cases of zero-day exploits — attacks that take advantage of unknown vulnerabilities. We expect this problem will only grow worse. In fact, Cybersecurity Ventures predicts that zero-day attacks will rise to one-per-day by 2021, up from one per week in 2015. The hard truth is that hackers and cyber villains have no problem sharing information — like hacking tips, vulnerabilities, scams — with each other. In order to meet these cyber threats head-on, security professionals need to cooperate in the same way. We need to take sharing to the next level, and use threat intelligence as an essential tool in responding to and preventing the future cyber attacks in 2018 and beyond.