Palo Alto Networks hosted a really successful Security Summit last Thursday. They had many thought leadership speakers holding various workshops and more than 1,000 strong turnout.

We heard from Mark D. McLaughlin, CEO of Palo Alto Networks, about how security covers all aspects: from Cloud, SaaS, mobility & BYOD, Internet of Things (IoT), to Virtualisation.

He spoke about the paradigm shift: prevention orientation. These days, it is no longer about being reactive and manual, but more proactive and automated (i.e. the next generation prevention platform).

We need to encourage threat sharing: to turn unknown threats into known threats quickly, automatically sharing known threats, so that the community can leverage on that.

Mike Burgess, Chief Information Security Officer at Telstra spoke about: Pace, Scale and Reach

Security is a risk management exercise. You cannot be 100% secured. But you can certainly manage this risk.

The image above is the Five Knows of Cyber Security approach created by Mike Burgess and Rachael Falk.

In one of the workshops, this was highlighted as some of our current Security challenges:

• People demand more
• Processes – must adapt faster
• Technology – must be “consumable”

Yet we must consider the traditional approach to IT has been mainly in:

• using legacy technology
• intentionally and/ or unintentionally complex
• de-centralised/ fragmented (shadow IT)
• slow to deliver and costs alot; and
• most things were opaque

I thought I would share a couple of interesting quotes from the newest PANW publication,“Navigating the Digital Age: The Definitive Cybersecurity Guide for Directors and Officers (Australian Edition)”:

How effectively a country combats financial cybercrime will directly affect business confidence in that jurisdiction. – Tobias Feakin, Australian Strategic Policy Institute

Automation cannot occur if the underlying data can’t be trusted, cybersecurity now
underpins the ability to automate. – Adrian Turner, CEO of Data61

It is essential that we need to be always prepared in delivering not just a service, but ensuring security is top priority in order to survive in this highly competitive and connected world.

If you had only $1 left to spend on cybersecurity, you should spend it on awareness. – Major General Stephen Day, DSC

A consistent highlight during the event has been on – investing into the future generation and building up a new generation of Security specialists. It is a very short term vision if companies are only focused on getting the current experience and skills that they desire by poaching from their competitors. On the flipside, it has also been raised that more companies should be adding value to their current experienced Security specialists or attracting these hires by investing into their upgrading of skills as well.

It will be interesting to know what are the readers’ experience on this. From your own personal observations, do you feel that companies are heading the right direction in how they are growing the Security talent? Any countries that have been doing it better that we can learn from? Curious to know your thoughts.

Overall, well done to PANW for hosting such an amazing Summit where great Cyber industry leaders come together to share their knowledge.

Shamane is a Senior Networks and Security Recruitment Consultant in the Australia market. She has an Honors Degree in Computer Engineering and as a specialist in her field, she enjoys networking and going for professional meetup events. Do connect with her if you would like to be kept updated on the latest market trends and exciting opportunities. – http://bit.ly/2dfsTqJ