Achieving Cybersecurity Effectiveness in a World of Advanced Threats

July 11, 2017

| Michael Busselen | Executive Viewpoint

CrowdStrike CEO and co-founder George Kurtz was featured In a recent Forbes article, Security Advice from the CEO of the World's Newest Unicorn — CrowdStrike, where he outlined his recommendations for organizations seeking to increase their cybersecurity effectiveness. These recommendations mirror CrowdStrike’s comprehensive approach to endpoint protection and the philosophy behind the company’s Falcon platform:

Visibility: Organizations need to have visibility across all the assets on their endpoints.

Without this, it’s impossible to manage those endpoints and be able to detect compromises.
Constant monitoring: It’s critical to be able to monitor whether there’s an active compromise. Kurtz explained that CrowdStrike is a big proponent of OODA — observe, orient, decide and act. To accomplish this requires constant monitoring. He emphasized that even though a company might consider monthly monitoring to be sufficient, it’s as if you are giving your chess rival the power to make multiple moves while you wait. “Speeding up the OODA loop is the only way to stay a step ahead of your adversaries,” he said.
Behavioral analytics: As the pace of cybercrime accelerates, organizations need the power of artificial intelligence (AI) on their side. Detecting patterns in hundreds, thousands or even millions of attacks per day can’t be accomplished with human insight alone —

it requires AI and advanced machine learning techniques. Currently, CrowdStrike monitors more than 48 billion events per day. To put that in context, it’s greater than the number of tweets Twitter handles all year. Also, having DVR-like recording capabilities at the endpoint means CrowdStrike customers can review and replay compromises and learn from them.
Compliance isn’t security: It’s important not to mistake regulatory compliance for security. Compliance is essential to operate in many industry sectors, but complying with requirements doesn’t constitute the comprehensive approach effective cybersecurity demands.
Security ecosystem: Develop a full-spectrum cybersecurity ecosystem, because you won’t have sufficient coverage if you’re forced into a “single pane of glass” solution. That’s why CrowdStrike customers and technical partners know they can easily integrate and collaborate via Falcon’s robust APIs.
IT hygiene: Every organization should train their employees in solid IT hygiene habits, and should make them part of an ongoing security strategy.

Read the article in its entirety, and learn why CrowdStrike was named a leader in the IDC MarketScape: Endpoint Specialized Threat Analysis and Protection 2017 Report.