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Abstract:

This presentation by a representative from the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) outlines the multifaceted challenges and opportunities in the field of cybersecurity, emphasizing that it is a "team sport" against increasingly sophisticated adversaries. The speaker stresses three key imperatives: imposing material cost on adversaries, building evidence-based resilience against real-world threats, and preparing for future, potentially kinetic, cyber events. The talk delves into the asymmetric nature of adversaries, their unconstrained and brazen tactics, and rapidly evolving capabilities. Key challenges include the nascent state of the industry, closed ecosystems, pervasive technical debt, and vendors charging extra for basic security. Opportunities for improvement include leveraging market buying power, increasing transparency, fostering a scientific approach to security, and engaging in proactive threat hunting and standards development. The speaker issues calls to action for community engagement, data sharing, improving incident response, and investing in research to tackle fundamental problems like securing legacy systems, web vulnerabilities, and supply chain trust, ultimately aiming to make the UK a hostile environment for cyber attackers. The presentation concludes by highlighting emerging threats like IPv6 scanning and the security implications of synthetic biology and quantum technologies.

Cybersecurity: A Team Sport Against Apex Predators

• 0:19 The Core Problem: Cybersecurity is a "team sport" against "apex predators," demanding collective effort.
• 0:37 Three Key Takeaways:
  • Impose Material Cost: Adversaries currently operate with little or no ramifications; the goal is to make their operations costly.
  • Build Evidence-Based Resilience: Current security solutions often lack proven efficacy against real-world threats.
  • Prepare for "The When": Focus capabilities on future threats, not just today's, particularly concerning industrial control systems (ICS) with potential kinetic effects.
• 2:26 Asymmetric Adversaries: Opponents are unconstrained by norms, brazen, rapidly improving technical capabilities, increasing operational sophistication, and have both tactical and strategic initiatives (e.g., aiming for strategic placement like in Guam).
• 5:36 Industry Challenges:
  • Nascent State: Cybersecurity is likened to 1800s medicine, with widespread unproven "magic elixirs."
  • Closed Ecosystems: Inability to extract telemetry or introspect, creating "walled gardens" that adversaries exploit.
  • Vendor Practices: Inexcusable practice of vendors charging extra for basic security features like logs or secure services.
  • Technical Debt: Egregious amounts of technical debt across global technology, providing opportunities for adversaries to dwell and exploit.
  • Lack of Efficacy Evidence: Vendors often make unsubstantiated claims without independent proof of their solutions' effectiveness.
  • Scalability: Many "artisanal" security solutions require top-tier talent and cannot scale for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
• 14:15 Opportunities for Progress:
  • Incentives & Market Power: Utilize incentives (e.g., R&D tax credits for cyber) and cohere the buying power of critical national infrastructure (CNI) to demand better vendor transparency and logging capabilities.
  • Transparency & Science: Encourage greater vendor transparency (especially for SaaS vulnerabilities) and transform cybersecurity into a "true science" with a strong underlying evidence base.
  • Community Coordination: Avoid duplication of effort through community coordination (e.g., OWASP) and active participation in standards bodies, where adversaries are already embedding their ideals.
  • Machine Speed Solutions: Develop automated, near-real-time solutions to address threats, taking humans out of the immediate response loop.
  • Information Asymmetry: Reduce information asymmetry across the board, potentially learning from data exchange models in other countries.
  • Radical Candor & Surprise: Foster open, honest conversations about real problems, even uncomfortable socio-technical ones, and surprise adversaries with unexpected, novel defense strategies.
• 22:54 Calls to Action (General & Research):
  • Engage with NCSC: Collaborate with the NCSC to contribute energy and insights to national cyber defense.
  • Provide Data: Share data on "real pain" and challenges to help identify thematic issues and inform government and private sector responses.
  • Improve Incident Response: Enhance incident response capacity and capability across various systems, especially operational technology (OT) and mobile devices.
  • Market Forces for SMEs: Apply market forces to ensure SMEs receive essential security features like multi-factor authentication (MFA) and log access by default without extra cost.
  • Scale Active Cyber Defense: Develop the next generation of "Active Cyber Defense" programs that operate at population and sectoral scale, not requiring more smart humans to drive them.
  • Research Focus Areas: Secure legacy systems, enhance web security at scale, build trusted systems from untrusted global supply chains, and find definitive solutions to make phishing a "thing of the past."
• 30:03 Closing Thoughts & Future Threats: The speaker advocates for not tolerating "seatbelts as a premium" in cyber, sustaining security alongside rapidly changing technology (e.g., AI), and achieving better observability and human capital solutions. He highlights the need for a "pre-mortem" approach to anticipate and plan for failures. Emerging threats include widespread IPv6 scanning and the security implications of futuristic technologies like synthetic biology (brain cells on FPGAs) and quantum sensing, which will make current cyber problems "quaint."
• 34:00 Learning from Finland: Finland's success in combating misinformation through generational education, starting in schools, serves as an example of taking "big bets" that fundamentally change the game and build resilience at scale.
• 36:29 Ultimate Goal: Make the UK the "most hostile place to target, infiltrate, and dwell online."