The story of Icarus imparted upon us the wisdom to avoid flying too close to the sun. If we remember nothing else from the story, we all remember that. But the fable also introduced a concept that resonated throughout history and spawned (perhaps first in print via Calvin Hobbes) one of the most pervasive idioms in human history – killing two birds with one stone.
The aphorism resonates with business owners and managers appreciative of its core lesson of synergy. And its resilience makes it a pretty good stand-in for the value of a single-provider solution that delivers its own kind of resilience – battling cyberthreats with enhanced human and threat intelligence. On this front, one (provider) is greater than two. Here are three ways threat intelligence can be synergistic between humans and machines:
- Your clients need training based on current threats. When your training source is a cyber resilience provider on the frontlines in the battle against cybercrooks, it can leverage its advanced threat intelligence and real-world knowledge to ensure your clients are training employees on relevant threats and procedures.
- Training should be based on your client’s risk profiles. Any security training is better than none, and cyber hygiene and security basics should be part of any security awareness training package. But let us ask you this: which training provider can better prepare your clients?
(A) One that delivers generic training in a one-size-fits-all package
or
(B) One that has insight into the business model risks your clients face and real-time, threat-intelligence-powered knowledge of the types of attacks on each client’s infrastructure?
The question answers itself.
- Threat intelligence also backstops humans. AI-powered threat intelligence doesn’t just inform human training. It also adds layers of defense in front of humans – stopping many threats before they get to them and, when embedded in endpoint security, it can contain threats when humans fall for phishing or other scams. In fact, when endpoint security is paired with endpoint backup-and-restore, individually compromised workstations can be patched and rapidly restored (one of the hallmarks of cyber resilience).
Talking Points
Discussions with clients about why they need single-source threat intelligence solutions should focus on simplicity and the hard realities of today’s threatscape.
Some businessowners and managers are overwhelmed by the breadth and prevalence of cyberthreats. For some personalities, positioning their cyber defenses as boosts in human and machine intelligence is easier to get their heads around.
And since threat intelligence reaches across multiple products and defenses, this simplified approach at the top level may help you roll other protective solutions underneath the umbrella of “smarter machine defense.” (And from there, it’s just another step into strategic backup-and-restoration engineering to develop true, end-to-end cyber resilience.)
It’s also vital for clients to understand the reality we live in. Cybercrime is a booming growth industry. Crooks have become so successful at the digital crime game that criminal organizations exist where employees clock in and clock out as they would from any job. With thousands of ransomware attacks occurring daily, unified threat intelligence that addresses both human and system weaknesses is essential to becoming resilient when attacks occur.