By Sergio De Los Santos, Head of Innovation and Labs at Telefonica Tech
Despite the overwhelming challenges we still face in the world of cyber security, we have come a very long way since the early days of cyber security. Starting from those challenging early days at the turn of the century, when attackers were roaming around user systems and thwarting the industry, we are now much more aware and better equipped to fight back more effectively against attackers. This is thanks to the growing expertise and better technology, but, above all, thanks to a mature industry, which is much better prepared overall to combat the threats. What exactly does this improvement in the industry consist of?
One of the keys to having succeeded in raising the level of effectiveness in the industry is in fact mutual support. It is not possible to create a strong industry without the cooperation between the different personas, which leads to a strong community that supports each other. There is no point in fighting wars separately. A very positive thing in today’s defense industry is the acknowledgement that collaborating as a community is an advantage and beneficial to all of us. Communicating knowledge, sharing information, partnering to work more efficiently, reporting new discoveries, or even admitting attacks with transparency. All of this is already part of the routine activities that the industry carries out without any complexes, thereby benefiting the rest of us. Thanks to this we can be successful and enjoy clear benchmarks.
Telefónica Tech clearly believes this and our contribution to CTA is a good example of this. Having a place to share information, contextualize it and contribute to improving the security of customers and, therefore, of the entire community, is something that has proven its effectiveness many times over, both to defend our customers’ and our own infrastructure and devices.
This does not mean that such relationships will stop the problems, but it does mean that without such a community defense, the difficulty of keeping ourselves protected would be significantly greater by several orders of magnitude. Attackers have also evolved, they have collaborated with each other, and they have become sophisticated enough to pose a serious threat that we must keep fighting. But we have the tools to confront them, both technically and in terms of collective knowledge. After all, alone we can go faster, but together we can go further.