Tech Journal All-In: Facing Down Cybercrime With a Fold-Proof Strategy

How do you take a high-stakes game of chance and make it work to your advantage? You perfect what isn’t left to chance — and start playing a better version of the game.

Right now, the battle between hackers and security teams feels like an unrelenting poker game with high stakes: your data.

You don’t know what tool sets cybercriminals have — or what hand they’re playing — and they don’t know what you have, either (unless you’ve got a clear tell). Your data is powering the pot, and it’s growing relentlessly whether you like it or not.

After working in the cybersecurity space for 25 years, I think there will always be some elements of murkiness or chance when it comes to cybersecurity. But I also see an opportunity to lean into what you can control, learn to play the hand you have now and graduate to a more measured game.

As the national director of network and cloud security for Cloud + Data Center Transformation at Insight, here’s how I help organisations do it.

It all starts with the north star of cybersecurity maturity: The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework. The framework offers best-practices guidance across five areas: Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond and Recover. It was created precisely because too many organisations were betting most of their resources in one area and getting compromised in others.

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