Most of the security teams’ work has nothing to do with chasing advanced adversaries

If someone new to the industry were to spend a few hours watching movies about security (pick any of your favorites), or going through the industry marketing, they would inevitably conclude that security teams are warriors who spend 24/7 fighting advanced and highly targeted attacks, patching zero-days to prevent them from being exploited by nation-states, and responding to incredibly sophisticated threats. On the other hand, if the same person were to attend a local BSides, Blue Team Con, or any other practitioner-focused conference and ask people what their day-to-day looks like, they would be surprised to learn that it’s not all about stopping nation-states and preventing nuclear disasters, and that most of security team’s responsibilities look similar to folks in other departments. In this piece, I am diving deeper into our habit of glamorizing attackers and defenders, discussing what the day-to-day reality of security teams looks like, and the reasons why we need to build products

If someone new to the industry were to spend a few hours watching movies about security (pick any of your favorites), or going through the industry marketing, they would inevitably conclude that security teams are warriors who spend 24/7 fighting advanced and highly targeted attacks, patching zero-days to prevent them from being exploited by nation-states, and responding to incredibly sophisticated threats. On the other hand, if the same person were to attend a local BSides, Blue Team Con, or any other practitioner-focused conference and ask people what their day-to-day looks like, they…

related reading

• The End-State Fallacy: Where Is AI Security Headed?endstatefallacy.com
• A Deep Dive Into The Cloud & Application Security Ecosystemsoftwareanalyst.substack.com
• Building practitioner-focused cybersecurity: nine principles for founders and product leadersventureinsecurity.net
• The dark side of the moon: demystifying cybersecurity business management for CISOs and security practitionersventureinsecurity.net
• Why we need more startups and venture capital in cybersecurity, and what needs to change for the industry to matureventureinsecurity.net
• The importance of adopting a security-first mindset and why compliance is a bad substitute for securityventureinsecurity.net
• Security is about data: how different approaches are fighting for security data and what the cybersecurity data stack of the future is shaping up to look likeventureinsecurity.net
• Frankly Speaking - Cybersecurity maturity: 3 types of companies and what this means for the industryfranklyspeaking.substack.com
• The Future Application Security Engineergyan.ca
• Cybersecurity technology adoption cycle and its implications for startups and security teamsventureinsecurity.net
• The rise of security engineering and how it is changing the cybersecurity of tomorrowventureinsecurity.net
• Solving problems when nobody will admit they have one: practical advice for building products in cybersecurityventureinsecurity.net