The ongoing pandemic forced many businesses and institutions to accelerate their digital adoption. The current health crisis has made many of us realize the benefits of previously introduced innovations like workplace flexibility, process automation, and prioritizing the adoption of technology in almost all aspects of any industry.
The second day of the ongoing VST ECS Tech Summit 2021 highlights the importance of mitigating cyber threats and gives attendees a glimpse of the future of cybersecurity as presented by some of the big names in this space: Cisco Meraki, VMware Carbon Black, Fortinet, Kaspersky, FireEye, IBM, Trend Micro, and Micro Focus.
Happening from 07 to 15 June 2021, the VST ECS Tech Summit 2021 features some of the most significant technologies that will impact the business landscape. In today’s afternoon sessions, speakers looked into how the pandemic ushered a new era of cybersecurity threats and guided participants on new approaches to threat detection and response with the advanced technologies available now.
Kaspersky: Beef Up Your Cybersecurity Posture
One of the leading names when it comes to cybersecurity, Kaspersky opened the afternoon session of VST ECS Tech Summit 2021’s 2nd day earlier.
“Fake news, data breach, phishing, ransomware, cryptojacking (malware), and AI-driven threats are increasing in sophistication. The need to address the Philippines’ cybersecurity challenges has become extremely significant as we move towards an economy powered by connectivity, big data, and IOT (Internet of Things),” according to Chow Lai Leng, Head of Enterprise (South East Asia) at Kaspersky gave a very interesting talk on how businesses and organizations can beef up their cybersecurity posture.
Chow mentioned that the Philippines ranked 6th globally with the most number of online threats in 2020. One contributing factor to his is the lack of security awareness among businesses. The Kaspersky executive also said that people can be the weakest link but also is the first line of defense when it comes to cybersecurity.
Products like the Kaspersky Security Center can easily take the complexity out of security administration and IT systems management with its fully scalable console that aims at supporting ever-growing businesses with changing security needs — all from one unified management console which is also available as a web-based console.
FireEye: The Perfect Cyber Security Storm of 2020
During the current pandemic, we saw related attacks and a boom in Internet and remote access technologies. The rise of ransomware campaigns and expanded attacks against state and municipal networks alongside hospitals and schools become prevalent. Highly advanced Sunburst and UNC2452 (threat actor) attack to supply chains are continuously increasing.
Ever since the discovery of these global intrusion campaigns to distribute malware known as Sunburst and UNC2452, FireEye has committed itself to support its customers and the cybersecurity community with free resources, tools, and services to help you detect and successfully block these threats.
Kwee An Ping, Leader, Systems Engineering – South East Asia at FireEye said, “One of the key matrices that we track at FireEye is the ‘Attacker Dwell Time’ or the amount of time an organization that has been compromised failed to detect the attackers already inside their environment.” Among the lessons learned from these ‘Attacker Dwell Time’ are finding the right mix of cyber defense, prioritizing analysis, validation and measurement of detection capabilities over time, and strong security architecture.
The speaker from FireEye added that among the top industries under attack are business and professional services, retail and hospitality, financial services, healthcare, and high technology.
FireEye and Mandiant boast their combined portfolio of solutions that enable every security team in the world to easily augment and automate detection, protection, and response capabilities under a single security operations platform — Helix (powered by intelligence and expertise from Mandiant).
IBM: Keeping Secure in a Transforming World
Rajesh Baronia of IBM Technology’s Digital Trust Security team discussed how organizations can be secured while adopting the new normal in a transforming world.
“Security is perimeter-centric. With the adoption of cloud, mobile ecosystem, and third-parties coming in, organizations are forced to think how to protect their diminishing perimeter,” said Baronia. He also added that in the new normal, passwords will not be good enough as everyone will be a remote worker. During this pandemic, we saw changes in how businesses operate, and the current complexity of operations pushed organizations to turn to a new security paradigm — most implementing “Zero-Trust” to manage their digital transformation.
IBM Security can help organizations reduce the risk of insider threat while preserving customer privacy with their expertise in the digital trust space.
Trend Micro: See More, Respond Faster with Trend Micro Vision One
The years 2019 and 2020 are identical if we are to base it on the Threat Landscape. This is according to Jessica Bernardo, Pre-Sales Consultant (Philippines) at Trend Micro. Still among the top threat types in the country are malware, ransomware, phishing, and vulnerabilities for both computers, mobile, and IoT devices.
Following the saying that “you cannot protect what you cannot see,” security teams can leverage the MITRE ATT&CK framework from Trend Micro to simplify security communication across their organization. This framework provides in-house security teams with increased coverage visibility by providing audits for coverage gaps to discover where they may be vulnerable to threats. From here, organizations can use the evaluations to compare vendors and determine which solutions are best suited to fill this gap. The increase in visibility can also help identify coverage overlaps that could be adjusted to optimize cost.
“We have seen a decrease in mobile malware but it does not matter where your location is, or what industry and company you are from, we are all facing attacks. You need a solution that does protection and detection through visibility because you cannot protect what you cannot see,” according to Bernardo.
Micro Focus: Cyber Resilience in the New Normal
One of the best traits Filipinos have is being resilient — having the ability to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions. Something that we can also apply to cybersecurity in the new normal, according to Joseph Alexander “Jo-Al” Delgado, Country Channels Manager of Micro Focus Software, Inc.
“Cyber Resilience is the new normal. We adapt with intelligence and focus on doing these things: protect your identities, applications, and data through building a robust security posture. Accelerate threat detection by detecting, responding, and recovering from advanced threats,” said Delgado.
As one of the world’s largest enterprise software providers on a global scale, Micro Focus has Business Support capabilities that provide unlimited 24×7 technical support, competitive response times, self-help resources, and software updates.
Know more about the 2nd day of VST ECS Tech Summit 2021 via #TheFutureOfCyberSecurity, #TechSummit2021, #VSTECS and by following VST ECS, the country’s leading ICT distributor, on their social media accounts in Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.