THE QUEST FOR RELIABLE CYBER SECURITY

Abstract

The sun set on another long day at the headquarters of ReliaQuest where Brian Murphy leaned back in his chair and exhaled deeply as he considered the cyber security breaches that had consumed the media in recent weeks. Retail giants like Target, Lowe’s and Home Depot had fallen victim to serious data breaches. He pondered how his company, ReliaQuest, could make a difference in a world saturated with an invisible army of hackers. Companies had to fend off attacks 100% of the time, but the hackers only had to be successful once. As Brian contemplated the brand new Secure Operations Center (SOC) being built in his offices in downtown Tampa, he reflected on his recent pitch to a multi-billion dollar global medical device company. The company wanted all of ReliaQuest’s solutions—the Assess, Secure, and Manage options. This would be a multi-million dollar contract over several years. But the CIO and CEO had been very clear, with the contract would come a demand for a 100% guarantee that ReliaQuest solutions would prevent any information system breach and eliminate the possibility of any loss of data for their customers, suppliers, or employees. Cyber security, as Brian thought of it, was the largest and most expensive cat and mouse game in the corporate world, and often undervalued by companies until a breach occurred. How could ReliaQuest offer solutions that companies would value with or without a breach? How could Brian’s team provide alternatives to companies who frequently did not even understand the wide variety of cyber security threats? What kinds of risks to data and information security were acceptable? What was the cost/benefit analysis on a breach? What sort of role should the client company play in protecting their data and that of their customers, vendors, and employees? Was there such a thing as too much security? Certainly there could be too little security, right? Could ReliaQuest, or any cyber security company, “guarantee” zero breaches, or losses of sensitive data and information? What could ReliaQuest offer its clients when every solution promised came with the risk of a breach and loss of data?