It is amazing to think that the SolarWinds hack was already three years ago, and we are still learning from the incident. That is how it goes with cybersecurity; you are never done learning. The CISO mentions three key points: collaboration, measuring risk and remaining ready for it to happen. These are important but planning for a cyber-attack to happen and planning what to do in the aftermath can also be very different things. I believe another important point is planning for the worst.

If you can come back from what you believe is worst case scenario, then you are on the right path to be battle ready. Planning to fail is just as important as planning to win as breaches become inevitable instead of random news stories. After you think about the failures, you can begin to test the redundancies and explore if your backup plan works, or if it needs refinement. As boring as documentation can be to write up, it is imperative to have for security as well. How can you know something went missing if you didn’t know you had it in the first place? Asset management also includes important data: where it is and what it is. Attacks on secured networks are evolving constantly and so should all our habits for how we communicate our information and secure it.

Commentary by – Marcus Meng