Events , RSA Conference , RSA Conference Videos

How Geopolitical Tensions Are Affecting the Threat Landscape

The geopolitical upheavals of the last few years have led to a huge uptick in cybercrime driven by nation-state threat actors. Cyberwarfare has become new age terrorism, and critical infrastructure industries such as healthcare are bearing the brunt of the attacks, said Yevgeny Dibrov, CEO at Armis.

Most of the critical infrastructure is in the operational technology environment, where numerous connected assets and devices are essential - but many of them are outdated and incapable of being patched. Attackers are targeting these industries because of these vulnerabilities and there is potential for significant impact, which is why Dibrov said critical infrastructure needs heightened security.

"There is an exponential growth of devices in the last 10 years, and it's doubling," Dibrov said. "We probably have more than 50 billion devices around the world. The vast majority of connected devices have no real protection and are not built with any thought about security. There is also an exponential growth in vulnerabilities. More and more vulnerabilities for more and more assets create a super expanding attack surface that creates a huge gap for organizations."

In this video interview with Information Security Media Group at RSA Conference 2023, Dibrov discusses:

• The impact of escalated geopolitical tensions on the evolving threat landscape;
• How the attack surface has expanded exponentially - at the price of visibility;
• The role that technical debt plays in the way organizations shore up their defenses.

Dibrov, who co-founded Armis in 2015, has multiple areas of expertise including cybersecurity, IoT, OT, IoMT and asset management. He is an official member and contributor at the Forbes Technology Council. Prior to Armis, he was head of global business development at Adallom.