Cyber Security for the Future: What can we learn from academia?

The true value of academic life passed me by when I was at school and especially during my university years, to the point where I could have missed that whole period out from my life and I would be in a similar position and role as I am now (without being able to read or write but otherwise similar).

Today, many more courses are vocational in a way that means that students who have a good idea as to the employment direction they wish to go in can accelerate those opportunities in ways that 30 years ago were just not possible. Universities that were previously the crème de la crème for English Language, Physics, Veterinary sciences or History now additionally offer International Business, Game design and Cyber Security.

One of the more complex aspects of a CIO or CISO’s work life is keeping ahead of the hackers, criminals and disgruntled employees and out of the front page of the Wall Street Journal or Financial Times. Nothing kills a stock valuation faster than the loss of 1.2million customer’s details. This is something that will keep a security admin up at night and companies spend significant funds on solutions, consultancy and services to make sure the likelihood of this ever happening to them is limited and yet it still does.

A quick review of the latest Stanford University Cyber Security course shows the degree of complexity that students are learning about today to defend against those attacks in the future and it makes for interesting reading. Cryptography, National Security, Operating Systems and Bitcoin encryption are just a few of the topics on the syllabus however any course of this ilk is structured, planned and in many ways static for at least a year or more, giving the folks on the other side of the fence, who may well have started on a course similar to this, can range and explore every corner of the web for the latest and scariest Cyber Threats which can then be adapted and morphed into what ever imaginative daemon their skills will allow them to create.So where does that leave the CISO? Best practice is effectively out the window, systems have to evolve, technologies innovate and experiences need to be shared. The Cloud security market has exploded in the past 24 months with a multitude of security companies taking shared experience and knowledge from multiple customers globally and comparing and contrasting those scenarios to reduce the overall impact any specific Cyber Attack can create. The largest system integrators have an even greater advantage because not only do they see the pure data but they also engage and communicate with those customers on a daily basis, learning and sharing those best practices while creating case studies and disaster recovery plans for customers who have been or are going through the latest threats so that the next clients will learn from all that experience.

The combination of true Academic excellence and a defined learning process interacting and merging with past masters who have literally 1000’s of hours of joint experience make vendors like Intel Security, Kaspersky lab, Trend Micro, Symantec and Sophos the go-to contacts for businesses of all shapes and sizes to ensure they don’t end up on the front page of their national press.

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