Ahead of the DACHsec Virtual IT Security Conference on 12-13 May 2020, we took some time to sit down with one of our A-list Steering Committee members, Dr. Thomas Stubbings of the European Cyber Security Organisation (ECSO), to discuss his views on the DACH threat landscape, his predictions for the future and how we can best protect ourselves now against cyber attacks.
Read on to see the full sit-down interview and take a look at the agenda to see how the sessions at DACHsec 2020 address issues of Cloud Security, Governance, Risk Management, Threat Detection, and more!
Q. What gets you up in the morning?
Every day new challenges to improve the cybersecurity posture on a company, national or European level.
Q. How do you explain your job title to someone outside the cyber security industry?
I connect stakeholders and support them to better understand and cope with cyber security challenges.
Q. What are some of the key recent shifts in the cybercrime threat landscape that you’ve been seeing, and what do you think they mean for cyber security?
The aggressiveness of cyber criminals constantly increases. Blackmailing and extortion increasingly threaten businesses in their existence but also people on a personal level. We have seen personal extortion attacks which threaten people to destroy their existence and reputation by publishing compromising deep fake pictures and videos of them. We are confronted with a serious trust crisis – we don‘t know what to trust anymore.
Q. Is cybercrime evolving quicker than security?
The attacker is always in a better position because he needs to be right only once, the defender has to be always right – that is almost impossible. Cybercriminals are very creative and we always have to find solutions to the new problems they create.
Q. What do the next 5 years hold for your industry?
If I could predict this I would invest in the right companies and wouldn‘t have to work anymore. Five years is an extremely long horizon in our business. In the next years, I see certainly more of the same in terms of malware, extortion and fraud but I also expect a further worsening of the trust crisis. What is real, what is fake? The boundaries keep blurring. Maybe this is the beginning of a new trend of „re-localization“ – if we cannot trust anymore what we see online, we will re-orient to what we can see and touch in person.
Q. If you could change one thing about your work right now, what would it be?
I would like to work even more internationally. At the moment I have a bit of a focus on Austria, but I have a global mind, and I always like to work in other countries.
Q. What is the best or worst security advice you’ve ever heard?
Personally, to use a password manager – this is the only option to use secure and different passwords everywhere. Professionally, to invest more in detection and response capabilities.
Q. What’s your favourite way to stay informed about cyber security?
Various sources, interest groups, blogs, CERTs but also certain conferences.
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For more information on the event and on Dr Stubbings himself, visit dach.cyberseries.io. Register for a FREE virtual 2-day pass here!
