Erosion of boundaries amid remote work is creating new cybersecurity environment: CEO
On a professional level, the COVID-19 situation has generated many more opportunities for attackers to infiltrate systems, while on a personal level there is a new psychological contract between the employee and the firm, Team8's Nadav Zafrir said at CybertechLive Latin America
Cybertech
| 12/08/2020
A new type of cybersecurity environment is emerging due to the dramatic acceleration of digital transformation and the convergence of our personal and professional lives during the pandemic, a cyber expert says.
Nadav Zafrir, CEO and co-Founder of the Team8 venture group, made the comments Tuesday during a one-on-one session with Dany Yaker, Vice President of Technology for Credicorp Bank, at the Cybertech Live Latin America conference.
"Everything we have seen, all the trajectories that we have seen in digital transformation in enterprise and in the way we live our lives have just accelerated dramatically," Zafrir said. "The fact that almost 90% of our workforce almost overnight started working remotely from their homes has a huge impact on the acceleration of the digital transformation."
"Specifically this creates a new convergence in our lives," he said. The near dichotomy in the way people used to live their personal and professional lives is collapsing, and this is creating a totally new environment in terms of cybersecurity. For example, people are much more reliant on their home networks, according to the CEO.
"The ability to make a very clean cut between what is happening in our personal lives and what is happening in our corporate life is almost impossible to do in this environment," Zafrir noted.
The new reality, he said, has two major impacts on cyber security. On a professional level it creates many more opportunities for attackers to infiltrate systems, while on a personal level there is a new psychological contract between the employee and the firm. And in that sense, he added, people are more susceptible to phishing.
"On the attack side we're seeing a surge in attacks because at the end of the day, what is crime? Crime is means, opportunity and motivation. All these have gone up," Zafrir pointed out. "And finally the insider threat is much bigger because as individuals we now have a different attitude or aptitude to do things that a few months ago we wouldn't even dream of doing."
Creditcorp Bank senior executive Yaker commented that not just the attack surface but also the actual surface of protection has increased dramatically. "Cybersecurity and technology departments of companies have to expand their area, or their battlefield as they call it now," from a single office to several hundred satellite offices, Yaker said.
However, according to Zafrir, as bad as the COVID-19 situation has been, there is a silver lining as far as cybersecurity is concerned.
"The fact that the digital infrastructure that we have invested in in the last few decades is what's keeping the lights on," he said. "Because if you imagine this exact same situation without the digital infrastructure, without connectivity, without the internet, we would have been in a much worse situation."
Still, infrastructure has been stretched to the limit or beyond the limit in many cases, with some of the infrastructure not designed to support what it's doing right now. Many of the companies are already at Plan B and don't have a Plan C, according to the CEO.
"So although there's a silver lining, there's also much more fragility and the resilience level has dropped substantially. And we must be aware of that. Because if digital infrastructure was very, very important a few months ago, now it's literally critical."
The one-on-one session also addressed the security implications of the massive growth of e-commerce during the pandemic. In the long term, Zafrir predicted change must come if more and more of our lives are going to be incorporated into this online business environment.
"Things are converging and collapsing," he said, as people are not just shopping online, they are also banking and managing their health via the internet.
The CEO predicted that there will be a backlash regarding the use of personal data, saying "it's one thing to give all my information to Amazon to be used to sell me products better, faster and cheaper. It's a totally different thing if I'm giving away all my data for my banking or health, and all of this is now converging into one big unknown cloud somewhere where all my data is."
As a result, individuals are going to demand more transparency and ownership of their data which will lead to new types of solutions, encryption models, identity models, and legal frameworks, Zafrir said.
In conclusion, the CEO urged companies to adjust their security priorities due to the effect of the pandemic. "Don't think that this is an interim time and we're going to go back," he said. Companies should prepare for the possibility that maybe not 95% of their workforce, but maybe 50% will be working remotely at a certain point of time into the future, according to Zafrir.
The one-day CybertechLive Latin America online conference, held by Israel's Cybertech, brought together officials, industry experts, academics, leading companies and startups from around the region to discuss advanced security and technology solutions.
On a professional level, the COVID-19 situation has generated many more opportunities for attackers to infiltrate systems, while on a personal level there is a new psychological contract between the employee and the firm, Team8's Nadav Zafrir said at CybertechLive Latin America
A new type of cybersecurity environment is emerging due to the dramatic acceleration of digital transformation and the convergence of our personal and professional lives during the pandemic, a cyber expert says.
Nadav Zafrir, CEO and co-Founder of the Team8 venture group, made the comments Tuesday during a one-on-one session with Dany Yaker, Vice President of Technology for Credicorp Bank, at the Cybertech Live Latin America conference.
"Everything we have seen, all the trajectories that we have seen in digital transformation in enterprise and in the way we live our lives have just accelerated dramatically," Zafrir said. "The fact that almost 90% of our workforce almost overnight started working remotely from their homes has a huge impact on the acceleration of the digital transformation."
"Specifically this creates a new convergence in our lives," he said. The near dichotomy in the way people used to live their personal and professional lives is collapsing, and this is creating a totally new environment in terms of cybersecurity. For example, people are much more reliant on their home networks, according to the CEO.
"The ability to make a very clean cut between what is happening in our personal lives and what is happening in our corporate life is almost impossible to do in this environment," Zafrir noted.
The new reality, he said, has two major impacts on cyber security. On a professional level it creates many more opportunities for attackers to infiltrate systems, while on a personal level there is a new psychological contract between the employee and the firm. And in that sense, he added, people are more susceptible to phishing.
"On the attack side we're seeing a surge in attacks because at the end of the day, what is crime? Crime is means, opportunity and motivation. All these have gone up," Zafrir pointed out. "And finally the insider threat is much bigger because as individuals we now have a different attitude or aptitude to do things that a few months ago we wouldn't even dream of doing."
Creditcorp Bank senior executive Yaker commented that not just the attack surface but also the actual surface of protection has increased dramatically. "Cybersecurity and technology departments of companies have to expand their area, or their battlefield as they call it now," from a single office to several hundred satellite offices, Yaker said.
However, according to Zafrir, as bad as the COVID-19 situation has been, there is a silver lining as far as cybersecurity is concerned.
"The fact that the digital infrastructure that we have invested in in the last few decades is what's keeping the lights on," he said. "Because if you imagine this exact same situation without the digital infrastructure, without connectivity, without the internet, we would have been in a much worse situation."
Still, infrastructure has been stretched to the limit or beyond the limit in many cases, with some of the infrastructure not designed to support what it's doing right now. Many of the companies are already at Plan B and don't have a Plan C, according to the CEO.
"So although there's a silver lining, there's also much more fragility and the resilience level has dropped substantially. And we must be aware of that. Because if digital infrastructure was very, very important a few months ago, now it's literally critical."
The one-on-one session also addressed the security implications of the massive growth of e-commerce during the pandemic. In the long term, Zafrir predicted change must come if more and more of our lives are going to be incorporated into this online business environment.
"Things are converging and collapsing," he said, as people are not just shopping online, they are also banking and managing their health via the internet.
The CEO predicted that there will be a backlash regarding the use of personal data, saying "it's one thing to give all my information to Amazon to be used to sell me products better, faster and cheaper. It's a totally different thing if I'm giving away all my data for my banking or health, and all of this is now converging into one big unknown cloud somewhere where all my data is."
As a result, individuals are going to demand more transparency and ownership of their data which will lead to new types of solutions, encryption models, identity models, and legal frameworks, Zafrir said.
In conclusion, the CEO urged companies to adjust their security priorities due to the effect of the pandemic. "Don't think that this is an interim time and we're going to go back," he said. Companies should prepare for the possibility that maybe not 95% of their workforce, but maybe 50% will be working remotely at a certain point of time into the future, according to Zafrir.
The one-day CybertechLive Latin America online conference, held by Israel's Cybertech, brought together officials, industry experts, academics, leading companies and startups from around the region to discuss advanced security and technology solutions.
