Imagine going into a grocery store to shop for Thanksgiving dinner, but instead of seeing nice, orderly aisles, you see a massive pile of food in the middle of the grocery store. Finding the ingredients that you need to make dinner is going to be extremely hard because there’s no organizational system helping you understand where things are. The disorganization makes it very difficult to find what you need and compare competing products.
The cybersecurity vendor marketplace is like this disorganized grocery store. A proof of this assertion can be seen by looking at the vendor hall at any major security conference. The cacophony of sounds from vendors hawking their wares, the confusing language of the vendor’s marketecture, and the lack of any semblance of organization (aside from biggest to smallest) does not help buyers understand what they need or where to find it.
Because the cybersecurity community does not use consistent terminology to describe what we need, there is much confusion about what many vendor products actually do. Instead of a clear articulation of a product's capabilities, we are bombarded with overused, trendy jargon that usually leaves us wondering if the product can really solve any of our woes. Some organizations even organize themselves according to the jargon. We need to stop letting marketing pitches dictate our terminology and not lose sight of the more bland descriptors that actually tell us what something does.
The Cyber Defense Matrix helps us understand what we need organized through a logical construct so that when we go into the security vendor marketplace, we can quickly discern what products solve what problems and be informed on what is the core function of a given product. In addition, the Cyber Defense ...
Central Park West - 6th Floor HACK NYC 2018 events@magegroupe.comImagine going into a grocery store to shop for Thanksgiving dinner, but instead of seeing nice, orderly aisles, you see a massive pile of food in the middle of the grocery store. Finding the ingredients that you need to make dinner is going to be extremely hard because there’s no organizational system helping you understand where things are. The disorganization makes it very difficult to find what you need and compare competing products.
The cybersecurity vendor marketplace is like this disorganized grocery store. A proof of this assertion can be seen by looking at the vendor hall at any major security conference. The cacophony of sounds from vendors hawking their wares, the confusing language of the vendor’s marketecture, and the lack of any semblance of organization (aside from biggest to smallest) does not help buyers understand what they need or where to find it.
Because the cybersecurity community does not use consistent terminology to describe what we need, there is much confusion about what many vendor products actually do. Instead of a clear articulation of a product's capabilities, we are bombarded with overused, trendy jargon that usually leaves us wondering if the product can really solve any of our woes. Some organizations even organize themselves according to the jargon. We need to stop letting marketing pitches dictate our terminology and not lose sight of the more bland descriptors that actually tell us what something does.
The Cyber Defense Matrix helps us understand what we need organized through a logical construct so that when we go into the security vendor marketplace, we can quickly discern what products solve what problems and be informed on what is the core function of a given product. In addition, the Cyber Defense Matrix provides a mechanism to ensure that we have capabilities across the entire spectrum of options to help secure our environments.
Although the Cyber Defense Matrix was initially created to help organize security technologies, many other use cases have been discovered to help build, manage, and operate a security program. This project intends to capture these use cases and their implementations to help security practitioners mature their security programs.
Project: https://www.owasp.org/index.php/OWASP_Cyber_Defense_Matrix
Slides: https://www.rsaconference.com/writable/presentations/file_upload/pdil-w02f_understanding_the_security_vendor_landscape...-final.pdf
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The Critical Infrastructure Association of America, Inc. is a 501(c)6 Not for Profit. The mission of Critical Infrastructure Association of America is to create a membership-based, trade association of like-minded cybersecurity and closely related industry professionals that work in the field of cybersecurity. The goal is to share best practices, establish and maintain high operational standards and to educate and interact with those in the cybersecurity community within public, private and governmental sectors.