The holiday season is almost here, but before we dive into turkey and presents, there’s one more crucial prediction to unwrap: better security collaboration. For years, the cybersecurity industry has struggled with a lack of cooperation. However, 2017 might finally be the year when organisations start working together more effectively to combat cyber threats.
According to Juniper Networks‘ Scott Miles, senior director of cloud, enterprise and security portfolio marketing, the industry is slowly moving toward collaboration, but it remains in its infancy. “Beyond sharing basic data, we still lack the interoperability necessary to address the next generation of threats,” he explained. Yet, there is growing optimism that this is about to change.
Why Better Security Collaboration Is Finally on the Horizon
Raj Samani, CTO EMEA at Intel Security, predicts that threat intelligence sharing organisations will form among cloud service providers in 2017. These groups will improve the identification of and reaction time to attacks. “While some businesses and cloud service providers do not perceive the benefits of threat intelligence sharing today, this will shift within the next few years,” Samani said. He added that whether driven by legislation or the aggressiveness of attacks, we will see much more threat intelligence sharing among businesses and cloud providers, and the benefits will quickly become clear.
Although sharing information about failed and successful attacks can be embarrassing, Samani believes the advantages will outweigh the downsides. “Crowdsourced threat intelligence and collaborative analytics help form a more comprehensive picture of what is happening in the attack landscape,” he noted. This sentiment is echoed by David Mount, director of security solutions consulting EMEA at Micro Focus. Mount argues that businesses should collaborate more around early indicators of compromise to understand the known mitigation path.
Industrialised Attacks Demand Collaborative Defence
Cybercriminal gangs are industrialising their processes, searching for systems where they can replicate specific attacks. “This means the same tactics can be repeated hundreds of times,” Mount explained. As a result, the information security industry must work together and collaborate with law enforcement agencies to target these criminals. Samani added that further collaboration, particularly cyber threat intelligence sharing, will be necessary as the threat landscape evolves.
To gain the upper hand in cybersecurity, businesses must reject conventional defence paradigms in favour of radical new thinking. One key step is to be collaborative instead of hoarding information and to learn to prioritise cyber defence. On a large scale, this makes life harder for cybercriminals and ensures data remains more secure.
Real-World Examples of Successful Security Collaboration
Brian Honan, owner and CEO of BH Consulting, pointed to two powerful examples of how working together has already paid off. The arrests of the two suspects behind the DD4BC DDoS extortion group and the sharing of ransomware encryption keys through the No More Ransom initiative show what can be achieved when victims, industry, and law enforcement cooperate.
Honan quoted the Simon and Garfunkel song ‘I am a Rock’ to illustrate his point: “The line ‘I am a Rock, I am an Island’ is not feasible in today’s interconnected business environments.” He warned that companies that behave like islands will become isolated and easy prey for criminals. In the past, attacks have been more successful than they should have been simply because companies did not admit they were victims or share details of the attack. Thankfully, this trait is slowly changing, and Honan hopes it will accelerate in the future.
As we look ahead to 2017, the message is clear: better security collaboration is not just a nice idea—it is a necessity. For more insights on how to strengthen your cybersecurity posture, check out our guide on cybersecurity best practices and learn about threat intelligence sharing platforms.
