CYBERSECURITY
What role should the government play in improving cybersecurity standards?
Stuart Seymour: Government has a critical role. I support regulation – it’ s made every industry I’ ve worked in better from a cybersecurity lens. Governments should tackle fraud specifically – stand up dedicated departments, give policing more resources. As CISOs, we face nation states and cyber criminality, but sending reports to Action Fraud yields nothing.
Justin Kuruvilla: I’ m a petrol head who loves clean air regulations – you can have both.‘ Regulations are written in blood’ – usually reactive responses. I’ m glad we’ re moving towards resilience. The challenge is proportional application – a massive corporation versus a 10-person startup have different capabilities. Eventually, resilience becomes a competitive advantage.
Nick Godfrey: We’ re supportive of increased regulation because it raises the bar. Three helpful approaches: outcomefocused regulation requiring businesses to determine preferred outcomes first; appropriate board-level responsibility for those outcomes; and helping companies manage supply chain risks, particularly critical suppliers.
THE HUMAN SIDE OF CYBER DEFENCE
When Virgin Media O2’ s Stuart Seymour revealed his team had automated 900 hours of monthly cybersecurity tasks using AI, he thought everyone would celebrate.“ I was at my town hall talking about how we’ d saved 900 hours and it was brilliant,” he recalls.“ I said I’ d never met a person who loves Excel and cutting spreadsheets from one system to another.” Then someone raised their hand:“ No, I do love Excel.”
It’ s a perfect example of cybersecurity’ s biggest challenge: the human element. As Risk Ledger’ s Justin Kuruvilla describes:“ Your entire security shouldn’ t depend on whoever answers the phone first. I wouldn’ t want my parents in charge of security – their passwords are Justin1, Justin2, Justin3 despite me telling them otherwise.”
Google Cloud’ s Nick Godfrey adds the broader perspective:“ People report anomalies, work nights during incidents. They’ re the ones who will stay up all night and work weekends during an incident. The human being remains critical.”
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