“Understand risks, identify risks, and minimise them to the best of your abilities.” This is Richard Curran’s message to organisations facing a sharp spike in cyberattacks.

The security officer for data centre group sales at Intel was reacting to a recent survey of 100 Tech Monitor readers, which found 46% of respondents – all of whom had responsibility for enterprise IT security –  had witnessed an increase in attacks on their organisation since the onset of the pandemic.


Security leaders were invited to lend their insights on what steps CISOs should be taking to address this fast-changing landscape. (Photo by PabloLagarto/Shutterstock)

Curran was joined for the discussion by Roger Halbheer, chief security advisory, Cybersecurity Solutions Group at Microsoft, who observed that it is not uncommon to see such increases “when bad things happen”, as criminals try to take a change in circumstances and “leverage it for their own purposes”.

What both agreed was more an exploitation of existing weak points, rather than the emergence of entirely new threats, has been facilitated by an expanding attack surface, following accelerated digitisation strategies and the proliferation of connected devices.

This increase – which both experts agreed was more an exploitation of existing weak points, rather than the emergence of entirely new threats – has been facilitated by an expanding attack surface, following accelerated digitisation strategies and the proliferation of connected devices.

All three parts of the discussion are available now, along with white papers, and a previous panel discussion on cloud computing.

Click here to visit The Security Clinic and view the full discussion.