Fighting the bad guys who are spoiling the digital transformation party
Michal Braverman-Blumenstyk, VP, Cloud & AI Security CTO, Israel R&D Center GM, Microsoft Israel, spoke at Cybertech Global TLV
“The physical and virtual world are coming together with IoT and OT tech. While this is amazing progress, someone is spoiling the party – the attackers, which are leveraging this opportunity and trying to interrupt us,” said Michal Braverman-Blumenstyk, VP, Cloud & AI Security CTO, Israel R&D Center GM, Microsoft Israel.
Speaking at the Cyebrtech Global TLV conference this morning, Braverman-Blumenstyk discussed the extensiveness of the IoT world at a lecture titled “Where the Physical and Virtual Worlds Meet.”
“It’s everywhere – traffic lights, cameras, medical devices, manufacturing…there are 30 billion IoT devices connected worldwide. 10 years ago, the number was less than 1 billion.”
Braverman-Blumenstyk discussed the rise in using IoT devices due to the global pandemic. “The pandemic’s effect on this trend has been tremendous. We work from home, there is remote medicine, remote consumption…all of this is an amazing step for humanity, but there are many risks. In recent years, the attack surface has tripled,” she said, mentioning victims such as NATO and Colonial Pipeline – after the latter “all hell broke loose.”
While “60% of businesses day that IoT is crucial – there are a lot of security gaps,” said Braverman-Blumenstyk. “70% of all CISOs say that they have no visibility as to how many and which devices are connected to the network. And what you’re not aware of – you cannot protect.
“73% said that they don’t know how to protect the devices, and 60% said that they don’t even know if their IoT devices were attacked.”
So what can be done? Braverman-Blumenstyk stresses the need to protect the modern enterprise’ architecture with solutions specific to its different areas, but which are all tied together. She mentioned a Microsoft client, a smart building management company, which immediately identified “60 IoT devices that shouldn’t have been connected” once the Microsoft solution was turned on.
‘The digital transformation is amazing and it makes our lives better. We should not let cyber attackers interfere with this great progress,” concluded Braverman-Blumenstyk. “In order to do that, we need a combination of the best available solution, and a holistic approach.
“I am excited about the digital transformation and love fighting the bad guys who are trying to interfere.”