The cybersecurity community is evolving from a fortress mentality of “network defense” to a “threat-informed defense” approach. Over the last decade, the U.S. military has been at the forefront in this transition, first in the intelligence-operations bond that developed between analysts and warfighters during the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq and against al-Qaeda, and then in cybersecurity. Traditionally in cybersecurity, “blue” team defenders focused their strategies on meeting baseline cybersecurity best-practices: correcting misconfigurations, administering patches, and deploying commercial products. Red teams were smaller and testing occurred periodically and not at the requisite scale to validate the blue team’s defense effectiveness. If blue teams fail to orient towards the most important threats, resources are often wasted; absent effective testing, security controls likely fail. Three lessons emerge from the evolution of threat-informed defense in the U.S. military. It is important to (1) understand the adversary’s approach; (2) identify high-value assets and defense capabilities required to defend them; (3) build tight bonds between teams to focus on known threats and exercise your defenses. A leader also needs to be appointed to manage threat-informed defense across an organization, similar to the dual-hat of the Director of the NSA and Commander, U.S. Cyber Command. In this webinar, participants will discuss lessons-learned from implementing a threat-informed defense strategy in the U.S. Defense Department, public-private combined operations, and the private sector and leave better equipped to effect positive change in their organization. 

This session will address:

·       Understand an adversary’s attack mindset through the lens of a threat-informed defense 

·       Discover the benefits of building collaboration between red and blue teams via a purple teaming

approach to cybersecurity 

·       Identify high-value assets and defense capabilities required to thwart attacks 

·       Get practical information on how to implement these strategies in your own organization in

2022