Interview: Steve Moros, Cisco

Which technologies or innovations do you think will be game changers or reach maturity in 2019?

We will see threat intelligence and integrated security approaches reach maturity. These will be real game changers in 2019 as they play a key role in resolving many of the core challenges organisations are faced with. One of the key things to come out of the Cisco 2018 Asia Pacific Security Capabilities Benchmark Study, is the complexity of the environment. Australia has one of the most complicated landscapes in APAC — a huge number of organisations have more than 10 security vendors — but we’re going to see a lot more consolidation. In addition, our customers are telling us they are most about innovations and disruptions in cybersecurity, multicloud, automation and 5G in the year ahead.

What will be the biggest growth opportunities for your company and your customers in 2019, and why?

As we go more digital, more becomes vulnerable from cyber attack. Customers’ attack surfaces have grown exponentially, putting them at increased levels of risk. The network is a critical component for building cyber resilience. We also increased investment in digital infrastructure that is ‘software defined’ and can be automated and assured. Everyone is wanting to leverage this technology.

There’ll also be investment in private-public cloud security, management and orchestration — running workloads where it makes most sense economically, from a reliability and risk perspective. And delivering reliable, available, secure applications that provide the best user/employee experience — this is how we are interacting with business and government more and more; it’s an application and mobile economy.

What’s on your tech wish list from industry, regulators and innovators in 2019?

In terms of cybersecurity, the defenders are trying to fight a war against unlimited attackers. So we need to build an ability for more threat and intelligence sharing across the industry to combat the alarming growth in cybercrime. Industry, corporations, governments, academia and technology vendors need to work together. For example, if a big financial institution is attacked, they should share that information because information about what they were hit with can be passed around and put into that threat intelligence layer. So then what happens is that we start protecting Australia and the economy, minimising the bad guys’ ability to find a surface area for attack.

How important is education and training for ICT professionals during times of rapid digital transformation, and what initiatives need improving on this front?

ICT is one of those industries that has that additional challenge of moving at such at rapid pace. This makes it difficult for professionals to stay current and across current trends. There is some great work happening in the training sector now around the emergence of micro credentialing. E-learning has been around for a long time, but it is about how best to use this mode in the most effective and impactful way. Offering modularised content for the adult learner to grab and learn ‘on the go’ is what mainstream education providers are starting to invest in. Technology lends itself to support this, as learners can learn not just from their laptop but from their phones and tablets, and through podcasts or videos.

Steve Moros is Director of Cybersecurity at Cisco. He is a Cisco veteran of 18 years with experience in working across the ANZ business with key customers and partners. He is passionate about building cyber awareness on a broad scale and is focused on helping organisations build cyber resilience capabilities and strategies for protecting their data, assets and customers.

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