The digital world is like the Wild West: full of opportunity, but with dangers lurking around every corner. With cybersecurity threats evolving faster than ever, it can be tough to keep up. Zayo’s Chief Security Officer, Shawn Edwards, sat down with technology evangelist Marc Saltzman to chat about all things cybersecurity, including the current threat landscape and what we can do to protect ourselves.
Shawn Edwards, Chief Security Officer at Zayo | Marc Saltzman, technology evangelist
Marc: How would you describe the current cyber threat landscape?
Shawn: The main reason the landscape is so challenging right now is because it’s ever-changing. There’s so much digital transformation going on. The advent of AI has been one of the key shifting points for how we manage our cybersecurity risks and the additional threats that are facing our landscape.
Marc: What are distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks and why do you think they’re becoming a big issue?
Shawn: DDoS attacks are malicious attempts at disrupting normal traffic to a service or website. They flood it with a large volume of traffic and data so it becomes slow or unavailable, or even just crashes entirely. The reason DDoS attacks have remained a hot topic for so long is because they have a low barrier to entry, so it’s easy for adversaries to leverage DDoS attacks against a company or entity.
Marc: What are the motivations behind DDoS attacks? Is it political?
Shawn: I would say that’s one of the primary attack vectors. If someone wants to silence a voice, then they want to do something to shut down the visibility and accessibility of that content. You can also see it when someone has a grievance, like hacktivism, so they’ll attack a company to try to cause disruption and create discord.
Marc: Are there other cyber threats we should watch out for these days?
Shawn: Phishing has been and remains one of the main attack vectors for most of these adversaries, be it identity theft, financial gain through fraud, corporate espionage, or unlawful access into systems. And the main reason for that is because the human element is typically one of the weakest links.
Marc: So what are some essential steps that companies should take to secure their operations?
Shawn: Covering the foundational elements is going to give you the biggest return on investment for the amount of effort you put in. This includes things like DDoS prevention, phishing prevention, endpoint malware protection, and security awareness training. These are generally table stakes but have a really large return on investment for most companies.
Marc: How does Zayo stay ahead of cyber threats and ensure strong protection for its customers?
Shawn: We control much of the backbone network, so we see a lot of the attacks before they manifest to our customers. We also have layered protections, such as managed firewalls and managed DDoS services, which offer additional visibility and control. The idea behind a defense in depth approach is that you layer on all these different layers of defense.
Marc: Where do you think we’re going in terms of the future of cybersecurity?
Shawn: I’m a big proponent of the usage of AI, and I have seen significant value in leveraging AI to detect threats, manage threats, mitigate threats, and automate our response to these threats. I know it gets a lot of bad press because the adversaries are using it too, but I do think there’s a lot of value coming out of AI for security that will move us leaps and bounds forward.