Key cybersecurity concerns among CISOs examined

Mounting zero-day vulnerabilities, more sophisticated living-off-the-land attack techniques, and escalating extortion levels were noted by Mandiant executives to be among the most pressing cybersecurity concerns faced by chief information security officers, CyberScoop reports.

“The aggressiveness by which cyber criminals are operating, particularly groups that we’ve been tracking recently, are making a CISO’s job really, in some cases, a nightmare that they have to live through because they don’t just have to think about stolen data — they have to think about the well-being of the people that work for them as well,” said Mandiant Intelligence Vice President Sandra Joyce at the Next technology conference of parent firm Google Cloud last week.

Increasingly advanced supply chain attacks were also regarded as a primary CISO worry by Mandiant Consulting Vice President Jurgen Kutscher.

“Supply chain is a big problem — CISOs are worried about it. Because all of the small companies that are making the innovative software today, a lot of these startups don’t have security staff… So it creates sort of a backdoor insecurity to some extent,” Kutscher added.