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President’s Message – Q2, 2015

Paul Sand, President InfraGard Chicago Members Alliance
Paul Sand, President
InfraGard Chicago Members Alliance

Greetings, Members:

Cybersecurity is the dominating topic for many enterprises today and thus is a timely and important topic for this magazine to consider.

The number of threat actors that desire to do us harm grows each and every day, and those actors are becoming increasingly better funded and more skilled. Nation-state-driven actors seek to gain economic and military advantage through intellectual property theft, competitive intelligence gathering, and preparedness to successfully attack critical infrastructure. Criminal actors seek to divert funds, defraud enterprises and consumers, and steal personal financial information. Such strong motivations coupled with available funding have developed a strong market for hacking tools that have lowered the bar for the skill level required to conduct attacks against us. More attackers with better tools, rich resources and strong motivations make this a critical concern.

Enterprises are faced with increased spending to control the risk that the threat actors present to the livelihood of their businesses. This spending is growing without an end in sight. It challenges the economic viability of the enterprise and slows the cycle of innovation by making fewer resources available to build better and more efficient new products and services. New approaches to the management of cyberrisk must emerge.

The number of skilled, well-qualified cybersecurity professionals still lags behind the demand for the services they provide to U.S. companies. As a result, many information security departments are forced to operate with inadequate resources making them more vulnerable to attack today, and reducing the time available to innovate and prepare for the future.

I don’t raise these topics to paint a bleak picture, but because I am optimistic that by focusing our attention on the right issues we can devise strong, economic cyberdefense capabilities. So, please read this issue, understand the significant challenges we face, and put your creativity to work to develop the solutions we need.

Sincerely,
Paul Sand, President
InfraGard Chicago Members Alliance

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