National Cybersecurity Month: Experts and Analyst Comment on Recent Security Breaches

NEW YORK and POINT ROBERTS, Washington, October 16, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --

Investorideas.com (http://www.investorideas.com), a global news source covering leading sectors including cybersecurity and biometrics, issues commentary from industry experts and analysts on recent security breaches (including Home Depot and JP Morgan) as National Cybersecurity Month drives even more awareness to the issue.

October 2014 marks the 11^th Annual National Cyber Security Awareness Month, sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security, in cooperation with the National Cyber Security Alliance and the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center.

Scott Sacknoff of the SPADE Defense Index (^DXS) said looking at stocks in the sector, "With increasing publicity related to network attacks, an increasing number of companies are increasing their cybersecurity investments to be proactive rather than responsive to attacks. The proof of this trend can be seen as cybersecurity companies report gains in the size of their customer base as well as growth in the contracts awarded by the large, S&P100-type firms. One can expect firms such as Palo Alto Networks (PANW), FireEye (FEYE), Cyber-Ark Software (CYBR), Barracuda Networks (CUDA), and Fortinet (FTNT) to be among those that should benefit."

Scott L. Greiper, President of Secure Strategy Group, LLC. told us, "The growing list of big-name hacking victims will support the broad secular growth being enjoyed by many companies in the cyber security sector.  Our SSG Small Cap Homeland Security Report for the first half of 2014 documents the strong performance of small caps in this sector. We anticipate growth will continue as the cyber threat and related legal concerns are taken seriously by more and more enterprises, especially small and medium companies.  To be sure, market participants need to step carefully given the presence of some inflated valuations and shifting technology requirements that can have rapid and significant impacts on certain providers."

Cybersecurity experts, Kiersten Todt & Roger Cressey, Liberty Group Ventures commented, "National Cybersecurity Month has been dominated by news reports of successful attacks in cyberspace.  Millions of accounts, addresses, names, phone numbers, and other valuable data have been stolen.  Recent high profile cyber breaches into Home Depot and JP Morgan, in particular, have demonstrated the diverse and pervasive threats that businesses face.  What are some of the key lessons from these significant breaches?  

Corporate board members are now being held responsible and accountable for breaches.  Corporate leaders must view Cyber risk as a risk equal to credit, liquidity, and operational risks.  Assessing risk is an enterprise-wide endeavor, not merely a department, division, or company activity. The complexity of cybersecurity interdependencies is a growing challenge for companies to understand and manage.  Recent corporate breaches also reflect an increased diversification of threat actors who have significant capabilities and have exposed the difficulty in discerning whether a cybersecurity adversary is a nation-state or a sophisticated criminal organization. Companies should assume they are targets of a complete range of adversaries and intentions.

Employee behavior is a primary corporate vulnerability - spearphishing remains the primary way adversaries can infiltrate a network. Educating employees is the foundation of effective corporate cybersecurity and is often neglected.  Private organizations should not expect the government to identify threats first; information sharing between the public and private sectors is essential to maintaining security and companies must commit to continually improving methods for information sharing.

Every company can learn from past breaches and apply the best practices and lessons learned upon which industry and government have agreed.  One tool that companies have already begun to use effectively to manage cyber risk, enterprise-wide, is the application of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework.  In light of the recent court ruling requiring companies to take "reasonable efforts" on cybersecurity, application of the NIST Framework can be viewed as doing so.

No company can stop every cyber threat to its organization; companies will continue to be breached and the adversaries will continue to be more creative and opportunistic in finding vulnerabilities to exploit.  Tools and technologies that help organizations more effectively manage cyber risk will become essential for companies to prosper in the current threat environment."

Gino Pereira, CEO of NXT-ID (NASDAQ: NXTD) said, "Companies need to approach cyber security from a holistic standpoint. Personnel, hardware and software all play a role. Authentication is a major factor. Passwords have been proven to be ineffective and biometrics are increasingly being used as a means of authentication of personnel.  Authentication should also rely on at least two factors to allow access.  Behavior of staff with access to sensitive information needs to be monitored.  Do they have outside internet access?  Can their behavior invite breaching attacks?  Companies should also look at keeping sensitive information in an encrypted format.  Here at NXT-ID, we are developing technologies that not only require dual authentication for access control but also dynamic pairing codes that change for each enquiry, making it very difficult for attackers to gain access to sensitive information."

National Cyber Security Awareness Month is designed to engage and educate public and private sector partners through events and initiatives with the goal of raising awareness about cybersecurity and increasing the resiliency of the nation in the event of a cyber incident.

More info: http://www.dhs.gov/national-cyber-security-awareness-month-2014

Investorideas.com has created a global cybersecurity stock directory for investors to research the sector. http://www.investorideas.com/Companies/HomelandDefense/Stock_List.asp#CyberSecurity

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