As recent events have shown, cyberattacks are extraordinarily expensive for the victims. After a breach and data theft, they are forced to spend millions cleaning up the damage, eradicating threats from their networks, fortifying defenses and managing the fallout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But for the adversaries committing the breaches, it doesn’t cost so much. And that’s a big problem for the Defense Department, the government and enterprises writ large.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Today a threat actor can send a fairly modest amount of money, not just on [attacking] DoD but on any sophisticated enterprise, and cause that enterprise to have to spend quite a bit more money \u2014\u00a0by orders of magnitude \u2014 cleaning up and fixing the problem,” DoD CIO Terry Halvorsen told reporters on a call on Sept. 15.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He echoed those comments Sept. 17 at the Billington Cybersecurity Summit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
“We are on the wrong side of the cyber economic curve,” he said at the summit. “We need to raise barriers to attackers’ entry, making it more expensive to play.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But how? The answer is multifold, but at least one aspect is automation, mechanizing some of the basic actions and response involved in cybersecurity maintenance, Halvorsen said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Automation is key to turning around the economics and coping with the speed of the threat, he said at the summit and on the call.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Automating eliminates the basic [adversarial] players, makes it so you have to raise your game to play,” Halvorsen said. “It reduces the benefit hackers will see and makes it more expensive for hackers to play.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another key part is establishing a pervasive, standard-operating-procedure culture of cybersecurity throughout entire enterprises and communities. It’s a worry that Halvorsen said keeps him up at night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“How do I get a cyber discipline\u00a0culture, how do I get a cyber economic culture and how do I get a cyber enterprise culture? I think those are the three things that if we got those, almost everything else comes after,” he said. “If I get to the cyber enterprise culture, I’ll start doing integrated, layered defenses, I’ll use automated tools \u2014 [joint regional security stacks are] the cornerstone for that \u2014 I’ll get the right level of accountability and I will understand the money.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n