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Security Firms join hands to form Cyber Threat Alliance, driving collaborative protection

Security Firms join hands to form Cyber Threat Alliance

Last week, I had the pleasure of meeting Rick Howard, CSO for Palo Alto Networks and Sean Duca, VP and Regional Head of Security for Palo Alto Networks. They had a lot of stories to tell and were excited to talk about how they have seen the cyber threat landscape evolve over time, since the creation of the internet.

To top it all off, Mr. Howard has founded a cyber security book club named “The Cybersecurity Canon.”  This is an exclusive set of books which are nominated to join the canon. These books must ‘accurately depict the history of the cybercrime community, characterize key places or significant milestones in the community, or precisely describe technical details that do not exaggerate the craft’.  Mr. Howard told us that the idea of this book club was to encourage young people, without any experience, to come into the field.

When it comes to technology in the public sector, security seems to be the most common obstacle to integration. This is why security providers are more important than ever before.

Since witnessing the Office of Personnel Management breach, Ashley Madison hack, and other notable cyber-attacks, government agencies are treading very lightly and cautiously accepting technology into their operations.

This year, Mr. Howard was guided by the Mark McLaughlin, CEO of Palo Alto Networks, to help launch the Cyber Threat Alliance. This alliance was founded in 2014, along with 3 other cyber security vendors: Symantec, Intel Security, and Fortinet. Since it has been established, Barracuda, ReversingLabs, Telefónica, and Zscaler have joined in as contributing members.

Their mission is to drive a coordinated industry effort against cyber adversaries through deep collaboration on threat intelligence and sharing indicators of compromise.

Mr. Howard told me that although it was difficult to bring these companies together and work out the trust issues, the end goal of containing cyber terrorism was a great motivation for them to band together.

How will this work? The companies that join the Cyber Threat Alliance have agreed share campaign information in real-time, on the threats they have identified for each type of attack. As described on their website, “each member must share at least 1,000 samples of new Portable Executable (PE) malware per day that are not observed on VirusTotal over the preceding forty-eight (48) hours at the time of sharing, and meet at least one (1) of the following three (3) criteria:

  • Mobile Malware: At least fifty (50) samples of new mobile malware per day in the APK, DEX, or other popular mobile malware file formats that are not observed on VirusTotal over the last forty-eight (48) hours at time of sharing.
  • Botnets C2 Servers: At least one hundred (100) botnet command and control servers (C2), and/or peer to peer nodes, per week beyond those listed on public forums such as ZeusTracker, must be different than the previous week’s dump from the contributing member; and must be active upon sharing.
  • Vulnerabilities & Exploits Sites: At least one hundred (100) attack sites per week beyond those listed on public forums, must be different than the previous week’s dump from the contributing member, and must be active upon sharing.”

When all of the threats are pulled together, it creates a compiled list which helps the companies target threats that have already been detected by others in the Cyber Threat Alliance.

So far, they have been sharing threat intelligence for a year and a half.  In the summer, Mr. Howard and his team were prompted to take on a ransomware campaign. They must work to prove that working together would be more efficient than working apart. The Cyber Threat Alliance will be publishing a paper on these results at the end of the month.

All in all, the Cyber Threat Alliance is ambitious, but this private sector collaboration might be the answer to the growing cyber threat landscape.

Through these different avenues, Mr. Howard is helping bring the cybersecurity community together. In our current state of security, collaboration is key to making headway towards safer and more secure online activity.

To read more on the Cyber Threat Alliance, visit: http://www.cyberthreatalliance.org/

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Qlik’s vision is a data-literate world, where everyone can use data and analytics to improve decision-making and solve their most challenging problems. A private company, Qlik offers real-time data integration and analytics solutions, powered by Qlik Cloud, to close the gaps between data, insights and action. By transforming data into Active Intelligence, businesses can drive better decisions, improve revenue and profitability, and optimize customer relationships. Qlik serves more than 38,000 active customers in over 100 countries.

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CTC Global Singapore, a premier end-to-end IT solutions provider, is a fully owned subsidiary of ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation (CTC) and ITOCHU Corporation.

Since 1972, CTC has established itself as one of the country’s top IT solutions providers. With 50 years of experience, headed by an experienced management team and staffed by over 200 qualified IT professionals, we support organizations with integrated IT solutions expertise in Autonomous IT, Cyber Security, Digital Transformation, Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure, Workplace Modernization and Professional Services.

Well-known for our strengths in system integration and consultation, CTC Global proves to be the preferred IT outsourcing destination for organizations all over Singapore today.

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Planview has one mission: to build the future of connected work. Our solutions enable organizations to connect the business from ideas to impact, empowering companies to accelerate the achievement of what matters most. Planview’s full spectrum of Portfolio Management and Work Management solutions creates an organizational focus on the strategic outcomes that matter and empowers teams to deliver their best work, no matter how they work. The comprehensive Planview platform and enterprise success model enables customers to deliver innovative, competitive products, services, and customer experiences. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, with locations around the world, Planview has more than 1,300 employees supporting 4,500 customers and 2.6 million users worldwide. For more information, visit www.planview.com.

SUPPORTING ORGANISATION

SIRIM is a premier industrial research and technology organisation in Malaysia, wholly-owned by the Minister​ of Finance Incorporated. With over forty years of experience and expertise, SIRIM is mandated as the machinery for research and technology development, and the national champion of quality. SIRIM has always played a major role in the development of the country’s private sector. By tapping into our expertise and knowledge base, we focus on developing new technologies and improvements in the manufacturing, technology and services sectors. We nurture Small Medium Enterprises (SME) growth with solutions for technology penetration and upgrading, making it an ideal technology partner for SMEs.

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HashiCorp provides infrastructure automation software for multi-cloud environments, enabling enterprises to unlock a common cloud operating model to provision, secure, connect, and run any application on any infrastructure. HashiCorp tools allow organizations to deliver applications faster by helping enterprises transition from manual processes and ITIL practices to self-service automation and DevOps practices. 

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IBM is a leading global hybrid cloud and AI, and business services provider. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Nearly 3,000 government and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM’s hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM’s breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and business services deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM’s legendary commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service.

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