As the geopolitical crisis in Ukraine continues to cause ripple effects around the world, NightDragon hosted a NightVision event to focus entirely on the State of Cybersecurity in the European market. Moderated by NightDragon Founder Dave DeWalt, the event explored the impacts of Ukraine and other cyber threat trends in the region, as well as cybersecurity and technology buying trends and what innovation categories are rising quickly.
Our speakers included some of the top leaders in the European cybersecurity market, including Exclusive Networks CEO Jesper Trolle, Orange Cyberdefense Executive VP Technology & Marketing Laurent Celerier and Former Commander of the UK Joint Forces Command Sir Chris Deverell.
Some takeaways:
- The Ukraine crisis has had an incredible impact on the European market and on cyber warfare overall. “It has also heightened the prominence of cyber warfare in modern conflict. We see governments all over the news, utility providers, news agencies coming under attack,” said Jesper Trolle, CEO of Exclusive Networks.
- While there hasn’t perhaps been the all-out assault of cyberattacks that were originally predicted, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t significant lessons to be learned or further threats to come, said Sir Chris Deverell. “We need to guard against the risk that governments, businesses and individuals maybe start to think that the cyberthreat has started to be exaggerate because there hasn’t been a cataclysm coming out of the Ukraine crisis.” What was underestimated, he said, was the collective defenses that have been put in place. Other factors include lack of coordination on the Russian front and the difficulty of launching an attack of the scale many predicted.
- Other trends that the leaders are watching in terms of customer spending or challenges include data and privacy, identify and access management, password protection, AI and machine learning, the speakers said. They cited drivers such as hybrid working, a proliferation of data, digitization and other factors. Customers are also specifically responding to the Ukraine crisis with an increase in demand for threat hunting services, said Laurent Celerier. “70% of CISOs said they will increase spend in cybersecurity,” he said.
- “Attack surface expansion is here to stay,” said Sir Chris Deverell about the impact on the transition to remote work. He said organizations will need to develop long-term solutions to this new reality, rather than quick-fixes. This is in addition to the previous threat vectors that remain strong, including human error, poor password protections, phishing, and ransomware.
- Public-private partnership is at an all time high. “This is the greatest silver lining to today’s threat landscape,” said Dave DeWalt. Laurent Celerier agreed, saying that this is happening in Europe in a much more escalated way, just like it is in the US.
- Regulation in Europe remains high to move companies towards investments in cybersecurity. “It may help eradicate some of the issues we are facing and validates the industry we are in. Ideally, it should eliminate some rogue behaviors that are happening,” Jesper Trolle said. He cited API security as one example, where companies may be affected by the decisions made by other organizations that they are connected with. However, he said regulation has to be done for the right reasons and with the right aim in mind.
A full recording of the event can be found above. To view NightDragon’s other NightVision events, visit our Events page.
