The 2021 RSA Conference got underway on May 17, with RSA CEO Rohit Ghai explaining what resilience is all about and what that means for cybersecurity.
Resilience is the theme for the 2021 RSA Conference, which is being held as a virtual event as the ongoing global pandemic continues to restrict in person gatherings. Ghai opened the conference and his keynote with an acknowledgment that this year's conference follows a year of trial and tribulations for everyone. The path and the way forward in his view was summed up in one word - resilience.
"Resilience isn't just about getting up when you fall," Ghai said. "To be good at it, we must fall less often, withstand the fall better, and rise up stronger every time."
The Intersection of Chaos and Resilience
Ghai commented that the concept of chaos is a good way to describe the cybersecurity landscape. He noted that in cybersecurity, defenders are dealing with multiple, connected technology stacks across different cloud providers. On top of that, Ghai said that there is the added randomness of malicious actors trying to disrupt operations and instil fear.
"How can you secure chaos?" Ghai asked rhetorically. " You can't, you don't - you focus on resilience by embracing chaos."
Embracing chaos in Ghai's view is about expecting the unexpected, trusting no one and compartmentalizing failure zones. Going a step further, he suggested that cybersecurity reliability engineering teams should constantly assess and test their responses to different types of risks and attacks.
"If you don't have visibility, then you don't know what to defend," Ghai said. "Once you do have visibility, use threat intelligence to understand your vertical's likeliest antagonists, including their methods."
Zero Trust and Resilience
The concept of zero trust is also critical to enabling resilience.
"Zero trust was always important, but in the post COVID work from anywhere, always on world, it is an imperative," Ghai said.
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