A lack of visibility and the failure of security incident and event management (SIEM) technology to work efficiently has harmed business.
Speaking in the opening keynote of RSA Conference in San Francisco, RSA President Amit Yoran said that security remains in the dark ages, and we are at an inflection point “where technology can create its own detsiny and the results of which we cannot predict”.
Referring to 2014 as the year of the “mega” breach and with things getting worse rather than better, most sophisticated security tools are not enough to stop miscreants making off with data worth millions of dollars and ruining reputations.
He said: “2014 was yet another reminder that we are losing the contest as our adversaries are out manouvering and outgunning the industry and what we rely upon is fundamentally broken.” Making the analogy about building walls, Yoran said that they are not working as attackers can get around or over them, and “we are working from a map of the world that no longer exists”.
He said: “It is clear in security that we have not found what we are looking for with the map in both hands, as it does not match the terrain and we are hoping the terrain will magically change or the perimeter will prorect us, and our mindset remains with us and clinging to maps and relying on perimeters.
“We are relying on intrusion detection and anti-malware that have to have seen a threat before, so by their very definition these tools are incapable of detecting threats that matter to us. This futile aggregration of the telemetry of technology and implementing flawed and the increasingly useless technology known as SIEM.”
He said that the strategies and systems we rely on are not providing the results we expect, and it is time for security to escape the dark ages. “Without a fundamental shift in the building blocks we will be dealing with challenges for a long time to come, and sophisticated attackers are not only in the game, they are in the liquour cabinet,” he said.
“Spending money but we are continously being compromised and we need to change our mindset to do and think differently.”
