Stay cyber secure

Cyber: Questions to ask yourself

 In our discussions with Board members, cyber is a topic that comes up time after time. This is partly because of its technical nature – boards feel ill equipped to ask the right questions and to feel confident they are protecting their business appropriately.Board members don’t need to be technical experts. But you do need to know enough about cyber to be able to have an informed conversation with your experts, and understand the right questions to ask.So here’s our take on the key questions to ask if you want to make sure you’re protecting what’s most important to your business.

Managing the successful convergence of information and operational technology

The convergence of IT and OT (operational technology) is no recent phenomenon. Industrial control systems (ICS) have been connected to IT architecture, providing remote connectivity for real-time data and remote support for years. Yet with the fourth industrial revolution, IT and OT integration is changing the way we do business. As the two become increasingly integrated, managing the convergence and the risks, is now critical to realising competitive advantage.

In this article we dispel the myths and look to understand the principles behind the successful convergence of IT and OT. We uncover the unknown risks associated with IT / OT convergence, taking inspiration from Former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s statement (2002), to structure our thinking: "There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we do not know we don't know."

IT/ OT convergence is not a technical problem. The priority and challenge is in overcoming culture and governance issues, which are difficult to get right. As we face an ever-changing digital landscape, cyber leaders must ask themselves, how well do you know your ‘known unknowns’? How can you identify knowledge gaps around the convergence of IT and OT, and what questions do you, as a CXO or senior cyber professional, need to ask to get it right? 

Securing your move to – and operating in – the cloud

Migrating to the cloud is not only imperative for many businesses to retain their competitive edge – it’s also exciting. Cloud is opening up opportunities to work in faster and smarter ways than ever before and is enabling innovation to the benefit of businesses, consumers and society as a whole.

It’s no wonder that more and more businesses are making the move to the cloud. Recent figures indicate that by 2022 up to 60% of organisations will use an external service provider’s cloud managed service offering, with handful of pioneers saying they have already reached cloud-only status.

But paired with opportunity, the shift to cloud also opens up vulnerabilities which must be addressed. How will you realise the potential of cloud while ensuring organisational security and compliance?

Effective cloud security requires more than addressing security and privacy issues which are known and understood, the ‘known knowns’. Equally important is considering the ‘known unknowns’ - the recognised knowledge gaps that need to be plugged – as well as the ‘unknown unknowns’ – the future questions and challenges that may arise as cloud providers continue to innovate at a rapid pace.

In this article we dig deeper into what the cloud security journey looks like and means in practice. 

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