Resiliency Is Key Measure of Cybersecurity

Security technology is much better than it was even just a few years ago, writes Kiersten E. Todt, in Fifth Domain. Nonetheless, it has one major liability. It’s only as good as the people who use it. Recent examples of this axiom include a July breach at Capital One affecting about 100 million individuals in the United States. A Seattle hacker breached the financial services company through a misconfigured firewall caused by human error. A month later Facebook reported leaving a database containing 419 million records unprotected, without a password. In fact, most of the major breaches over the last several years — Target, Home Depot, Sony, Equifax — were caused by access stemming from passwords that could be hacked. Besides the obvious need for companies to train their workforce, they must recognize that a key component of security is resilience — learning from experience. They should measure cybersecurity success not just by attacks blocked, but how well they respond after a breach occurs.