What keeps cybersecurity professionals up at night?

MUCH like defending a country, cybersecurity is a challenging function for businesses — and in most cases, it’s a task that a dozen or so specialists take care of.

With advancements like the internet of things and artificial intelligence (AI), the number of vulnerabilities has increased exponentially. A bigger challenge is that tools like big data analytics and AI can be used by hackers just as effectively as they can be used by cybersecurity professionals.

As a result, defending the company’s precious data and valuable insights from intruders becomes something that often keeps cybersecurity professionals up at night.

In an exclusive interview with Tech Wire Asia, Alagu Karuppiah, Head of Information Technology & Digital Products, Diners Club Singapore discussed some of the latest industry challenges.

“There’s a lot of things that keeps cybersecurity practitioners up at night,” he said.

“From the lack of cybersecurity talent in the market to the spread of connected devices, from the strengthening of various groups of hackers to having to deal with humans — who’re often the weakest link in our cybersecurity efforts, there’s a lot of factors that the industry is concerned about.”

However, the fact is, cybersecurity professionals are also getting better by the day, and the tools they have to support them are truly making their defense-efforts much more robust.

In fact, most organizations deploy several systems to protect the different functions of their business — and that’s fine unless something breaks down. That’s when most nightmares start. Maintenance and repair for such systems aren’t easy.

“Due to known and unknown threats, cybersecurity specialist start implementing complex networks in addition to the forgotten test or development servers. The issue boils down to who understands the big picture in order to maintain or troubleshoot them,” said Karuppiah.

However, the fact is more than expensive tools and software, the more one thing that all cybersecurity professionals emphasize on is having strong training and awareness program.

“This information security program must have a structure, a test exercise and ensure that all staff including vendors are trained on the organization security policy, process, procedures, and awareness,” suggested Karuppiah, who will be speaking about cybersecurity at the Cloud Expo Asia 2018 event in Singapore next month.

In conclusion, protecting the company from cyber attacks is a tough job — and given that there is a huge talent gap in the industry, things get even more challenging. However, empowering and training the cybersecurity team, constantly, can help most companies beat hackers, no matter where they are.

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