Self-Defence In A Connected World

Matthew Rosenquist is a Cybersecurity Strategist for Intel Corp 

As we race to embrace technology, we make ourselves increasingly vulnerable to cyber attacks. This is a calculated risk we all take. But recently, the threat has evolved in ways both startling and inventive.

Whereas a few years ago hackers had focused on crashing websites or harvesting data, a new type of attack, an “integrity” attack, quietly compromises the internal workings of companies or organizations, allowing criminals to pilfer exorbitant sums of money with minimal fuss. As these methods become more popular, our desperate need for trained cybersecurity professionals to combat them becomes more acute.

Motherboard spoke with Matthew Rosenquist, a cybersecurity strategist at Intel with over 20 years of experience, about the evolving methods of attackers and what we can do to defend ourselves in this digitally intertwined world.

Motherboard: Hi Matthew. What should we expect from cybersecurity in 2016?

Matthew Rosenquist: In the past several years, we’re seen nation-states become tremendously aggressive in the investments they've been pouring into offensive and defensive cybersecurity. Many governments around the world have been buying technologies and recruiting as many talented people as they could. Several years ago, they started scouting out DEFCON, BlackHat, and other hacker conferences in search of talent. DARPA created a fast-track program, which allowed using, let’s say, personnel that wouldn’t normally pass a security background check. The program ran its course for several years to bring in new ideas and tools. Any time defense agencies invest in capabilities, they want some kind of payoff. We’re seeing those investments come to fruition.

Cybersecurity has rapidly become the “fifth domain” of warfare, joining assets on the ground, air, sea, and in space. Cyber programs have really taken hold, with mature plans, operational competencies, and organizing structures within governments to foster and leverage those new capabilities. So we're going to see more activity, both offensive and defensive, as governments take advantage of all resources to protect their citizens and promote policies. Cyber tools extend what is possible and give political leaders new avenues, abilities, and options. Cyber is now another tool to move mountains from a political perspective.

MB: Do we have enough trained cybersecurity professionals to meet this demand?

MR: Right now we're probably short at least 1 million cybersecurity professionals around the world. Estimates are ranging between 1.5 and 2 million people within a couple of years. And it is painful. All of the security professionals have basically been snatched up. It’s a tremendously competitive market. As one of my colleagues recently said, it's basically a zero unemployment field at this point.

We’re really looking towards higher education to solve this problem, by increasing the supply of talent. Actually, Intel has taken an active role in helping to create a formally accepted cyber sciences degree within the US, and that will probably go worldwide. The pilot should be rolling out in several universities in 2018. That will help with educational content standards and overall consistency, so that the professionals coming out of higher education institutions are better prepared and there's a common expectation of their skills and capabilities.

We’re also promoting a huge amount of diversity. Sadly, there's a lack of women and underrepresented minorities in cybersecurity. It really limits the industry from a creativity perspective. If you’ve have all the same kind of people sitting around a room, they tend to think in the same ways which creates artificial limitations. The attackers don’t suffer from the same constraints; they are very diverse. If you don’t have that kind of creativity you’re being hobbled.

MB: Which nations are at the vanguard of this kind of technology?

MR: There are a few nations that have invested quite a significant amount of resources, time and money, and it would be the nations you would expect. I’m not going to go into specific names, but these are the ones that tend to maintain very large militaries or are active on the world stage. And they’re using cyber capabilities as an extension of those organizations.

The use of cyber is not limited to large countries. In fact, there are some small countries out there, which are very tech sophisticated, which have developed advanced capabilities to conduct cyber warfare and enhance their digital defenses.. There are a slew of countries that are simply buying off-the-shelf private software for surveillance or hacking purposes.

Cybersecurity holds a certain lure. It is an equalizer. Like back in the Wild West a handgun was the equalizer—everybody can hold one, everybody can shoot, and it didn’t require much skill. You were a threat. So we're seeing smaller countries, ones who want to have that political chip on the table, be able to invest in cybersecurity. And they don’t have to invest a lot. In fact, they don’t even have to have dedicated teams; they can outsource it to hacker communities.

MB: Is ransomware a new thing or are attackers just using it more effectively?

MR: Ransomware isn’t actually new. It’s been around for a while, but wasn’t very successful. A lot of the initial ransomware programs were technologically weak and weren’t encrypting files very well. Or it would just be a web page you could close. It wasn’t until much better written variants like CryptoWall, CryptoLocker, and some others came out, that were able to identify files and encrypt them with stronger keys. Properly coded encryption is real tough to undermine, for good guys or bad guys. And nowadays, they are writing it well.

MB: So what can we do to protect ourselves?

MR: Technology is a beautiful and wonderful thing that enriches the lives of people all across the world, making us happier and more productive. But the pace that we embrace technology far outstrips our capability to secure it.

In the cybersecurity world, it isn’t all about technology. You have technology and you have behaviors, the human element; it’s like two sides of a coin. In reality, you can install a stack of firewalls on your network, but that’s not going to stop an authorized user clicking stuff on the web and downloading and installing things. It’s just not. Even the most robust technology can be undermined by the actions of users.

Organizations must understand both the technology and behavior aspects. Security plans have to address both. And because the adoption of technology is now so widespread and complex, you can’t immediately protect everything. So you must prioritize. And that really the next evolution we’re seeing in the industry.

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