On July 30th in northern Virginia, some of the greatest minds in analytics for business, outcomes, and mission impact gathered to share their lessons learned and experiences with data analytics. Academia, government, and industry came together to provide a comprehensive approach to investigating how we can better extract knowledge from information. See our overall event recap here
The Cyber Security panel consisted of Ned Moran, professor, cyber consultant, and highly regarded cyber security professional, and Adam Elkus, a Senior Analyst at Analyst One and a PhD candidate at George Mason University studying computational social science; it was monitored by Matt Devost,President and CEO at cybersecurity and persistent cyber risk managment firm FusionX.
Echoing the issues identified by the Educating the Analyst Panel, the disconnect between strategic and tactical concerns vis-à-vis cybersecurity quickly emerged as an important theme. Mr. Moran shared the perspective of the programmer, whose priorities are first and foremost to defend – “engineers do not necessarily care about analysis.”
Meanwhile, Elkus drew attention to the fact that policymakers and strategists are not positioned to make knowledgeable decisions without strong understandings of the tactical nature of cybersecurity.
Elkus and Moran also recognized the continuously changing nature of the cybersecurity landscape. “The threat landscape has expanded,” said Mr. Moran, “because now there are more actors pursuing capabilities to breach networks… the diversity of actors is shocking.” With many diverse attackers using many different tactics to compromise a variety of different systems, the need for adaptability surpasses the need for precedence while pursuing more secure systems.
Concluding remarks reiterated the importance of the basics for maintaining cybersecurity. While attackers will always have the advantage in cyberspace, good hygiene – including strong passwords, securing networks, and using good judgment – should always provide a first line of defense for organizations and corporations.
Some interesting insights on #BigData and #cybersecurity from #dataanalytics panel with @MattDevost @moranned @Aelkus @USGIF
— Michael Nelson (@MikeNelson) July 30, 2014
Folks mentioned by the panel at #dataanalytics include @Jason_Healey @selil and @thegrugq – give them a follow.
— Matt Devost (@MattDevost) July 30, 2014