Rallying Cries And Brutal Honesty: RSA 2017 Could Signal The Start Of A Security Revolution
IN DEPTH: RSA 2017 and the call to arms for those tasked with keeping our online defences intact
Call for unity
The cyber security industry, as with any rapidly growing sector, has become rife with vendors over the last few years. There is now an abundance of products and services for organisations to sift through, as everyone fights for a slice of the very lucrative pie.
But this conference was not about jostling for position. Instead, there were widespread calls for unity and collaboration, both within the industry as well as between industry and government.
Ramzan called for businesses to “work together across the public and private sectors to ensure that our organisations, our infrastructure and our social institutions remain resilient”, while Young urged the industry to “admit we can’t go it alone and come together as an industry knowing that we’re better side by side, working together”.
But it was Microsoft’s Smith who really led the way. He first implored governments to do more, to join forces and tackle today’s cyber threats as a collective in order to “protect civilians on the internet”.
“We need to recognise that the time has come for us to come together as an industry around the world to call on the world’s governments. We need to call on the world’s governments to come together,” he said.
Then he moved onto the industry itself, urging businesses to make a pledge of cooperation that is immune from any political pressure or interference: “We need to pledge that we will protect customers, that we will focus on defence. We need to be concrete in showing how we will collaborate with each other to respond to attacks, that we will provide patches to all customers everywhere regardless of the attacks that they face.
“We need to be a global industry that the world can rely on to play 100 percent defence and zero percent offense. We need to make clear that there are certain principles for which we stand. We need to be clear that we will assist and protect customers everywhere regardless of where we are from. We need to be clear that we will not aid in attacking customers anywhere regardless of the government that may ask use to do so. We need to make the case to the world that the world needs to retain its trust in technology.”
The speech was Churchillian-like in its delivery and referenced the unity shown by the technology sector in Apple’s controversial battle with the FBI last year, where companies such as Box, Facebook, Microsoft and Google publicly stood in Apple’s corner.
“Lets go forward and show the world that it needs us to be what we can be when we’re at our best,” Smith concluded. “An industry that can serve the world, an industry that earns everyone’s trust every day, an industry that even in an age of nationalism, is a neutral digital switzerland on which everyone can depend on.”
Rallying cry
So, put all these things together and you’re left with a rousing, rallying cry of a conference that, in my mind, could very well lead to something extremely significant for cyber security and the global threat landscape in general.
Michael McCaul summed everything up nicely when he said: “Looking back on 2016, it was a watershed year in cyber space for a lot of the wrong reasons. But I think it made us all more realistic about the dangers we face and gave us a more clear idea of what needs to be done.”
This realisation was apparent at RSA 2017 and the need to act was made clear. The fight is no longer on the beaches, seas and fields as it was in Churchill’s day, but in the shadows of our modern, digital world.
Will this conference signal the start of some kind of cyber security revolution? Who knows. Just remember that if it does, you heard it here first.
