After the end of his term as head of the ISA (also known as Shin Bet or Shabak), Yuval Diskin entered the business world, founding cybersecurity firm Opora, of which he is the chairman. Today (Thurday) DIskin made a presentation to the crowd at the Cybertech Global 2020 conference in Tel Aviv, discussing his view on cyber threats.
Diskin pointed out that many companies look at cyber dangers as an internal threat, and don’t focus enough on what’s outside their organization. In addition, he said, people tend to forget about the human element: Every cyber attack has people at the other end, and people act in patterns that can be detected in the virtual world.
Diskin emphasized that an attack’s starting point is when it is being planned – people’s thoughts and initial actions are the first step. Imagine a scenario, he said, where there’s an alarm in this lecture hall and the security chief brings in virtually all of the guards. We, he told the crowd, would be essentially blind – and no one has a guarantee the attackers will even enter this room; effective security has to step beyond the scope of the organization.
Disking said Opora has spent four years reevaluating the structure of cyber attacks, and now has a three-part model. The first part is the idea, the planning, and the gathering of resources for the attack. Catching an attack in its early stages gives organizations extra time to anticipate it, perhaps as much as 72 hours, according to Diskin.
The former ISA chief said the technological means used for early detection should be paired with an organization’s internal security means, not replace them. If an organization has the right kind of internal and external security, Diskin said, many cyber attacks can be foiled before they even reach their target.
