Ken Estes

Systems Engineering Manager – Federal Civilian - Palo Alto Networks

[Nikesh Arora @nikesharora]

Attacks will accelerate from here on - We are there: Six months ago I said Mythos like capability will be widely available. It's happening. A critical vulnerability, a social engineering attack that looks innocuous, or daisy chaining publicly available vulnerabilities and conducting a sniper strike is all being witnessed in the wild. Incident responders have never been busier.

Some key points:
- attacks are not becoming more sophisticated, it's the same attacks, faster and by a lot more people.
- attack path discovery which took trial and error and multiple attempts is now trivial, open source LLMs are here to help
- you are as secure as your supply chain, insecure down or upstream players who have access to your infrastructure could be the next attack path, marketplaces and supply chain is an easier vector

The increase in activity is a result of more people becoming better at hacking due to the ease of being able to attack. Had not contemplated that in my calculus.

Please:
1. Test your infrastructure for accessible vulnerabilities and misconfigurations
2. Fix your code and demand your vendors do.
3. Old infra, or insecure infra at the perimeter needs to be updated first
4. New AI tools, especially coding need a security framework. Your developers will do more with code, new skills, and more automation. Don't forget the coding models have trained on human code.

Stay safe this Halloween :)

[Nikesh Arora @nikesharora]

It's been an eventful week. Multiple vulnerabilites in Internet facing software, coding repositories, examples of agent behavior that seem concerning and a flurry of security specialists with solutions that can partially solve your problem. There in lies the challenge. Given the state of IT and security infrastructure, no one solution works. Let's break it down:
1/3
1. Vulnerabilites are being found and will continue to be found as models get more capable, the fragmented nature of the effort denies us the opportunity for a comprehensive find and replace option.
2. Even if all vulnerabilities could be found instantly and patches available - we will be reliant on the ability of enterprises to deploy all these changes at speed. It is not clear what the collateral impact of all these patches will/could be to our infrastructure of deployed en masse.
We will need a hybrid patch approach.
3. Virtual patching(VP) is needed in conjunction with direct patching but for a comprehensive (VP) solve you have to be lucky enough to have "modern frontier defenders" (Cyber companies that have vaulted infrastructure that can create patches at speed and push content rapidly to protect their customers) you need them for your network traffic, your traffic to applications on the cloud, your WAF, your end point.
4. There will continue to be patches that will need to be deployed directly but virtual patching will take the heavy load off.

2/3 Medium term solve:
Unfortunately token economics and current cyber architectures will not allow for defender swarms to contend with an offensive attack launched using agents. (Some x pundits who aren't steeped in cyber should take heed). Yes, theoretically we should aspire to have these agentic swarms defend us when we are under attack, unfortunately an attack is a sniper moment, chained vulnerabilities, cloaked attack followed by swift exfiltration. It's a speed program not a brute force problem.

To solve for this, enterprises need to get their SOC architecture right, logs, feeds, cyber products orchestrated via a modern SOAR for swift response. Only then can we deploy agents to detect and remediate. In addition, enterprises need to modernize and dare I say platformize their perimeter stack to ensure consistency.

Unfortunately, enterprises still seem to not see the urgency across the board, decisions are stuck, CIO/CISO's have a lot on their plate. While some honestly have bit seen the scale of such a problem before and it's hard convincing the organization that one needs to open the floodgates on modernizing the IT and security infrastructure. So we will continue to see environments being brought down to patch today it's for PHP, tomorrow it will be for the next one.

3/3 AI deployments are the"wild wild west" - LLM capabilities are expanding faster than we can build products to secure them. Sure an agent will jump across guardrails in a research lab, which is a lesson for all of us to deploy agents securely. But there is a lag between the discovery, the availability of that in a public model and the time needed for the cyber industry to build governance or an antidote. And no, dear frontier lab friends, the world cannot just trust you to build the solve. The infrastructure industry in tech builds and the cyber industry secured and provides assurance to the boards and organizations around security and safety.

AI security is the new attack surface. CEOs (present company included) want AI adoption, getting the pace of adoption wrong could be the last decision we make, at the same time "deploying it wrong" could have the same consequence.

There are billions of dollars being spent on coding, is your coding harness secure? Start there. If agents can jump guardrails, they can hide stuff in code.

Validate business outcomes needed, test your user case and ensure agentic deployments are well guard railed. Deploy a second set of eyes to watch your deployments for drift, compliance and verifiability.

[Joe Koenig @koenigjk]

Wrapped up a fantastic @wwt_inc virtual Leadership Conference with 1700+ of our managers & leaders! Very impactful discussions about TRUST, mutual learning, coaching, and the importance of upholding our core values to drive a high performance organization. #WWTCultureInAction

[Ken Estes @kestes616]

@AnnCuiellette That is awesome !!!

[World Wide Technology @wwt_inc]

Our partner, Boys Hope Girls Hope, launched a new program called ALL In (Act. Learn. Lead) that engages young people to explore solutions for & serve communities hard-hit by the pandemic and systemic racism. Learn more about @BHGHNetwork here: https://t.co/CDPpnfwxMB

[World Wide Technology @wwt_inc]

Episode 3 of our #TEC37 video podcast series is all about reopening in the "new normal". Our #cloud, #IoT, and collaboration experts speak to the IT considerations as companies work through hybrid work environment options. Watch and listen here: https://t.co/Z8kRZxltkE

[Ken Estes @kestes616]

WWT Recognized with 'Internet's Highest Honor' at 2020 Webby Awards https://t.co/pPwWanwm8Z #wwtplatform via @wwt_inc

[Ken Estes @kestes616]

A Safer Way of Reopening Business https://t.co/XhRbzVUrL1 #wwtplatform via @wwt_inc

[World Wide Technology @wwt_inc]

Can physical distance monitoring & smart cameras help businesses reopen faster? This article reviews a video and analytics solution that integrates with @meraki cloud-managed smart cameras. https://t.co/ahmpng2vIB

[Ken Estes @kestes616]

Next-Gen Meetings https://t.co/ScbH0vmEVa #wwtplatform via @wwt_inc

[World Wide Technology @wwt_inc]

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[World Wide Technology @wwt_inc]

To all nurses everywhere, now more than ever, we appreciate and applaud you. Thank you and happy #NursesWeek! #WorldWideThx

[World Wide Technology @wwt_inc]

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⏳Voting closes on May 7th, at 11:59 PM PDT

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[Ken Estes @kestes616]

Business Continuity: Real World Examples of Technology Combatting Coronavirus https://t.co/CcV7XJEZS5 #wwtplatform via @wwt_inc

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[HIMSS @HIMSS]

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[World Wide Technology @wwt_inc]

From clinical diagnostics to virtual healthcare facilities, predictive #analytics is augmenting human expertise with machine learning and #AI: https://t.co/EB1TumfNzr.

[NASCAR @NASCAR]

🗣 Best captions for this conversation win!

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