Blog posts by Paul Fisher

This week, Microsoft made official its agreement to acquire Threat Intelligence vendor RiskIQ in a deal rumoured to be worth around $500m. It is not an unusual event; Microsoft has absorbed five businesses already in 2021, and usually it is to acquire a discrete technology it deems useful or sometimes to push into emerging markets. This latest acquisition falls into both camps. While Threat Intelligence is not an emerging in the normal sense, it has acquired a new importance in the last 18 months as global cyber-attacks reached a new level of intensity. The fact this has run in parallel...

What is left to say about PAM that has not already been said? Well in my opinion, quite a lot – as I hope you find out when you join me at the forthcoming KCLive Event, Operationalizing Privileged Access Management. I talk to PAM vendors all the time and I believe it is a truly exciting space to be covering and some of the innovations that vendors of all sizes are bringing to the table promise real progress in how we manage privilege access in the workplace – and, as you will discover, beyond the workplace.  Punching above its weight PAM is not by a long chalk...

I have been covering cybersecurity issues, first as a journalist then as an analyst, since 2006. In that 15 years I have heard the mantra that security is a boardroom issue hundreds of times. The subject has filled countless conference talks and media articles. It appears that the message is still not getting through if a speech by the new CEO of the UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) anything is to go by. In her first public speaking engagement in March this year, Lindy Cameron, said, you guessed it folks, security must be given more attention in the boardroom....

AI's role in reducing the impact of future pandemics As the coronavirus spreads fear and panic across the world, it’s perhaps timely to take a step back and consider the future of healthcare and how AI will help. But first let’s consider that the coverage and spread of the virus shows us precisely just why reliable data is needed to help us cope with new diseases. At time of writing, most official advice on coronavirus is not based on hard data led evidence on how the virus spreads, the best way to contain it, who is most vulnerable, what is the incubation period and so on....

Microsoft is currently running ads extoling the virtue of AI and IoT sensors in helping farmers produce more and better crops, with less waste and higher yields. Elsewhere in manufacturing, supply chain management is being transformed with digital maps of goods and services that reduce waste and logistical delays. In Finland, a combination of AI and IoT is making life safer for pedestrians. The City of Tampere and Tieto built a pilot system that automatically detects when a pedestrian is planning to cross the street at an intersection. Cameras at intersections accessed algorithms...

The importance of privilege accounts to digital organizations and their appeal to cyber attackers has made Privilege Access Management (PAM) an essential component of an identity and access management portfolio. Quite often, customers will see this as purely as a security investment, protecting the company’s crown jewels against theft by organized crime and against fraudulent use by internals. More successful cyber-attacks are now enabled by attackers gaining access to privilege accounts. However, that is only part of the story. Organizations also must worry about meeting...

At VMworld Europe 2019, Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware said security is fundamentally broken and that the overabundance of vendors is making the problem worse. I’m not sure this is true. Gelsinger had some good lines: applications that are updated and patched on a regular basis should be illegal and outlawed by legislation, and that security is too threat-based. Making security less threat-focused is a good thing The solution, according to VMware, is simple: we need to build more security in the platform with the supreme goal of a single security agent running across the entire...

There is more to the cloud than AWS, Azure, IBM and Google according to OVHCloud - the new name for OVH as it celebrates its 20 th anniversary. While the big four have carved up the public cloud between them, the French cloud specialist believes that business needs are changing, which gives them an opportunity in the enterprise market it is now targeting. In short, OVHCloud believes there is a small, but discernible shift back to the private cloud - for security and compliance imperatives. That does not mean that OVHCloud is abandoning the public cloud to the Americans. At...

Much is written about the growth of AI in the enterprise and how, as part of digital transformation, it will enable companies to create value and innovate faster. At the same time, cybersecurity researchers are increasingly looking to AI to enhance security solutions to better protect organizations against attackers and malware. What is overlooked is the same determination by criminals to use AI to assist them in their efforts to undermine organizations through persistent malware attacks. The success of most malware directed at organizations depends on an opportunistic model; sent out...

Car buyers gathering at the Frankfurt Motor Show last month will have witnessed the usual glitz as car makers went into overdrive launching new models, including of course many new electric vehicles reflecting big change in the industry. Behind the glamour of the show, the world’s biggest car makers are heavily investing in new technologies to remain competitive, including Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning. While perfecting algorithms for self-driving cars is a longer-term goal and grabs the headlines, much is being done with AI to improve the design, manufacture and...