Security Myths : TweetChat Roundup

April 3, 2018  |  Javvad Malik

Continuing our tradition of tweetchats, we were fortunate to have the brilliant Lesley Carhart join us as a special guest to share her views on security myths. It was a lively discussion with many viewpoints shared. Searching for the #AlienChat hashtag should give you a good insight into all the conversation.

Incident response

We kicked things asking what people thought were some of the biggest myths or misconceptions around incident response.

Lesley summed up the thoughts of many that incident response isn’t necessarily a rapid process.

Additionally, many viewpoints were shared

Security conferences are big – you’ll probably find a security conference or event of some description in nearly every major city around the world.

A lot of the discussion revolved around the concepts of the speakers and public perception of the attendees.

SIEM

SIEM has been the topic of debate for many years. Is it the one tool to save them all, is it just an overhyped technology, or can nobody agree on what it actually is? As expected, there was no shortage of opinions on the misconceptions surrounding SIEM.

Encryption and Backdoors

I may have had a little rant about this one…

Not that anyone disagreed

There were also some valid observations around the usability and education around encryption.

Anti-Virus

We were on a roll by now and we weren’t looking to avoid any of the tricky topics, anti-virus being the next on the list. Surprisingly, it didn’t turn into an all out anti-virus bashing question, with some good points raised about its usefulness.

Professional Certifications

Professional certifications are a polarising topic. Some professionals strive to collect as many as they can, while others turn their noses up in disgust whenever one is mentioned. Others, see them as a necessary evil to jump through recruitment hoops.

Cloudy with a chance of Security

There’s no escaping the cloud. More and more organisations are adopting it to some degree or another. So, it makes an important topic of discussion.

It reminded me of the wise words of an ex-colleague.

Threat Intelligence

We weren’t joking when we set out to destroy the big myths and misconceptions in the industry, so we pointed our focus towards threat intelligence and Twitter didn’t disappoint

Open Source Software

The cost and security of open source was a consistent theme among the participants.

Threat detection

We wrapped up our marathon hour by asking what common misconceptions there are with / around threat detection.

Conclusion

It would appear as if there are more myths and misconceptions in information security than there are truths. Although, that being said, there were a lot of common themes that most participants agreed upon, so  maybe it’s a case of fixing a few issues to have a broad impact.

Let us know if you have any additional thoughts or suggestions for future topics by tweeting us @AlienVault or join our next #AlienChat – we look forward to continuing the discussion.

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