Speaking@I5Talks on Building a cyber-resilient & secure cyber space for industry and cyber citizens

It was a great delight to speak at the Tenth Edition of i5 Talks on “Building a cyber-resilient & secure cyber space for industry and cyber citizens " organized by Tech Mahindra.   The talks brought together insightful perspectives from the leading lights of the Indian security industry in vibrant talks and panel discussions. Speakers included eminent CISO’s, entrepreneurs, researchers, bloggers, consultants and hackers. I spoke on the three big risks to cyber security and resilience. The first was, what happens to a nation if the power grid is shot down by cyber-attacks and fails for long durations, the second demonstrated how exposed cyber citizens are due to the ubiquitous and seamless use of cloud storage and thirdly, the high level of organizational skill and investment, cyber criminals put in to commit high value cybercrime on financial institutions. A short summary of the speakers and their takeaways are:

Aseem Jhakar -  Director , Payatu Technologies

• Lack of communication between the hacker community and the industry is a big problem. Hackers are seem as untouchables except when they are needed he most
• Bug bounty trends are increasing and rewards are sufficient to sustain a hacker’s income
• Industry has maligned the word “hacker”. Today, the word and community is associated with criminals.

Vishal Salvi Chief Information Security Officer, HDFC

• Companies need to transform and build a new security architecture to meet new and emerging threats
• Industry competitors need to collaborate to build secure supply chains to ensure that common suppliers do not skip investing in security
• Agile security should be the new paradigm. The current models of reacting to incidents or building defense in depth is too slow to combat the spate of attacks
• Security is today beyond CIA and assets – looks towards the business

Keith Prabhu, Chairman, Cloud Security Alliance, Mumbai chapter

• We need to brave the risks of using the cloud by using secure technology. We cannot go back to the bullock cart age because cars today are unsafe
• It is a matter of time before we see the first big attack on a cloud provider. They are a big target that cybercriminals cannot ignore
• The case of a refrigerator sending spam, is simply the tip of the iceberg as far as the Internet of things is concerned

Dr Zia Saquib, ED CDAC

• The Indian Government is researching on the use of alternate protocols to IP for setting up our secure critical infrastructure like nuclear stations
• The Indian Government has allocated large funds to the enhancement of IT and security

Shomiron Dasgupta, founder NetMonastery

• Entrepreneurship is difficult and needs perseverance
• Signal protection will be the next security wave

LS Subramaniam CEO NISE and Blogger

• Consumer education is a must to thwart cloud risks as they are easy prey for social engineering attacks

Puneet Garkhel, Head-Fraud Risk Practice, Mahindra Special Services Group

• Many miss the gorilla in the room when focusing on routine tasks
• Fraud happens because enterprises miss the obvious