I often get into discussions about budgets and how much a company should invest in its security program. There is no easy answer because the problem we are trying to solve has many unknowns.
There are many ways one may address this question, the main one being a rule of thumb.
Indeed I know I haven't posted for long. It's not that I don't have anything to say, but I'm trying to find a balance between posting something about things I know, and making sure the readers do not necessarily assume that this is how we do things in SUSE.
Getting there...
Some years ago, during a (quite extended) phishing avalanche in the company I was at the time, the (then) CIO said: Let's fire every user that falls for a phishing mail! That will solve the problem for good. I considered it a joke, and I replied pretty much with a rhyme: Let's train them before we blame them and I didn't give it a second throught. We went on to deploy some training modules, but never really implemented the technical controls on the mail server; an activity that if had been implemented, several of those phishing mails would never have entered the company. I think that this is not strictly a user failure and I'm inclined to blame the IT deparment more than the user.
Chances are you are familiar with the phenomenon called Game of Thrones. I expect that everybody who watches the series has a perspective and a preference on the person they wish to sit in the Iron Throne. But let's be honest; only science can forecast the outcome!
On April 4th and 5th I had the honour to participate in the 2019 CyberCentral Summit in Prague. A conference brilliantly organized by Michaela Stranovska and Alexander Nevski of EBCG. It is the first big conference I attend in Prague although this is the city I live in the last five years!!!
The conference was nicely balanced. The content included some very technical presentations such as Milan Pikula's presentation about the lack of security in IoT and Solomon Sonya's "Securing the perimeter - one IDS at a time".
On 26th and 27th of March I was invited to participate in the [Cyber Security for Critical Infrastructure 4.0 https://www.cybersenate.com/new-events/2019/3/26/critical-infrastructure-cyber-security] conference organized by Cyber Senate in Amsterdam. It was a very nice conference, organized brilliantly by Alex Matthews and James Nesbitt. Chris Blask was in charge of the coordination of the conference, and we all enjoyed a nice flow of the talks, panels and breaks.