Tag Archive for: Digital Resilience

Cybersecurity Canon Book Review: “Digital Resilience”

Palo Alto Networks Blog | February 27, 2020

I got into cybersecurity because I read books like Winn Schwartau’s “Information Warfare,” William Gibson’s “Neuromancer” and Cliff Stoll’s “Cuckoo’s Egg.” These books gave me a very balanced view of what cybersecurity could be, even though no one called them cyber in the 90s. Until I got Ray Rothrock’s book, “Digital Resilience,” I didn’t have a book I was comfortable with suggesting as a great first read to the next generation of cyber professionals.

If you’ve recently been put in charge of IT or IT operations and didn’t grow up in cyber over the past 20 years, “Digital Resilience” is for you. This book is also equally useful for new CEOs, CFOs or board members who need to understand cyber risk without getting overwhelmed with IT technology or the defeatism of “hackers and nation-states will always get in, so why bother.”

Network Resilience vs. Cyber Resilience

SIGNAL Magazine | January 6, 2020

There are certainly similarities between network resilience and cyber resilience. The foundation for both is the ability to maintain business or mission capabilities during an event, such as a backhoe cutting your fiber cables or a nation-state actively exploiting your network. But there are also significant differences.

On Cybersecurity: Two Scoops of Perspective

New York Times | September 29, 2019

Ben Cohen, the co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, calls spending huge amounts on the effort “a tragic waste.” Another urges creation of a cabinet-level agency to deal with threats.

To the Editor:

Glenn S. Gerstell’s article identifies the magnitude of the digital juggernaut and brilliantly lays out the difficulty of the challenge. It is this very complexity that underscores the need for a cabinet-level agency dedicated to cybersecurity to ensure coordination and resilience in the face of threats.

The Department of Homeland Security was created after the 9/11 tragedy, coordinating 180,000 employees working in the country’s intelligence, defense and law enforcement agencies. Similarly, in the 1970s, as Americans dealt with an energy crisis, President Jimmy Carter created the Energy Department to consolidate American energy policy and ensure a consistent supply of energy and protect the country from threats to our economy and readiness.

If desperate times call for desperate measures, then surely risky and rapidly changing times call for measures that are resolute. The United States must prioritize cybersecurity, just as we do homeland security and energy. Let’s not wait until the revolution is lost.

Ray Rothrock
San Jose, Calif.
The writer is chief executive of RedSeal, a cybersecurity company, and the author of “Digital Resilience: Is Your Company Ready for the Next Cyber Threat?”

Are You Ready for a Digital Doomsday?

Kotecki On Tech | September 16, 2019

“How do you recover from an attack and not go down?”

His answer: apply a resilience mindset from the physical world to deal with digital danger. 

RedSeal Announces Equity Investment from STG Partners

STG expands into cybersecurity space with majority stake in RedSeal, the leader in cyber risk modeling for hybrid environments

SAN JOSE, Calif. – April 10, 2019 – RedSeal, the leader in cyber risk modeling for hybrid environments announced today a growth equity investment from Symphony Technology Group (STG). Funding from the investment will support and accelerate RedSeal’s strong growth and market momentum.

More than 220 Global 2000 corporations and mission-critical government agencies, including all branches of the U.S. military, as well as power grid companies and the world’s most trusted financial institutions, depend on RedSeal. Its award-winning cyber risk modeling platform helps validate an organization’s security posture, accelerate investigation and improve productivity of network and security teams.

STG selected RedSeal because of the company’s innovative approach, proven track record, experienced leadership team, and passionate customer and employee base. Globally, organizations’ cyber terrain is increasingly complex, and they need end-to-end visibility across their network infrastructures to be resilient. Only RedSeal models the entire hybrid data center – including public cloud, private cloud, and physical networks. Its powerful analytics help security teams better prepare for and contain cyber risks within minutes and not days.

“The RedSeal platform is a truly differentiated offering and a must-have for all enterprises, public or private,” said STG Managing Director J.T. Treadwell. “The scale and depth of RedSeal’s modeling and analytic capabilities are unique in the market, and they create meaningful insights to inform and empower today’s overmatched security teams. The force multiplying that customers experience with RedSeal is the definition of using insights and understanding to optimize effort for impact, a vision that STG has pursued in many of our most successful investments. Given this shared mission of using real-time insights at scale to drive impact, RedSeal was a strategic choice for our firm’s first investment into cybersecurity, and we are thrilled to partner with Ray Rothrock and the leadership team to help them accelerate their growth.”

“We have found a growth partner in STG,” said Ray Rothrock, chairman and CEO of RedSeal. “They are aligned with our digital resilience strategy, and the enormous value that understanding your cyber terrain has on driving down your cybersecurity risks and exposure. STG’s collaboration and investment will help us further strengthen our position in the industry, expand and pursue growth opportunities, and drive increasing value to our customers.”

Atlas Technology Group acted as financial advisor and Paul Hastings acted as legal advisor to STG. Wilson, Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati (WSGR) acted as legal advisor to RedSeal.

About RedSeal

RedSeal’s cyber risk modeling platform for hybrid environments is the foundation for enabling enterprises to be resilient to cyber events across public cloud, private cloud and physical network environments. RedSeal helps customers understand their network from the inside out – providing actionable intelligence, situational awareness and a Digital Resilience Score to help enterprises measure and improve their resilience. Government agencies and Global 2000 companies around the world rely on RedSeal to help them validate their overall security posture, accelerate investigation and improve the productivity of their security and network teams. RedSeal is headquartered in San Jose, California. Follow RedSeal on Twitter and LinkedIn.

About STG
STG is the private equity partner for market-leading data, software and analytics companies. The firm brings expertise, flexibility, and resources to build strategic value and unlock the potential of innovative companies. Partnering to build customer-centric, market-winning portfolio companies, STG creates sustainable foundations for growth that bring value to all existing and future stakeholders. The firm is dedicated to transforming and building outstanding technology companies in partnership with world-class management teams. STG’s expansive portfolio has consisted of more than 30 global companies. For more information, please visit www.stgpartners.com.

On Norman Castles and the Internet

Dark Reading | March 15, 2019

By RedSeal CTO Dr. Mike Lloyd

When the Normans conquered England, they built castles to maintain security. But where are the castles of the Internet?

I recently had the pleasure of attending the ninth annual Workshop on Internet Economics (WIE) at the University of California, San Diego. It might not seem a likely place to discuss English castles after the Norman Conquest, but that turned out to be a strong analogy for the security challenges of our modern Internet.

We’re All Going to Get Hacked

Harvard Business School  | February 13, 2019

In November 2014, Sony Pictures suffered a massive, high-profile data breach, with hackers breaking in and stealing everything from confidential employee data to unreleased films. And not long after, on a Saturday morning, Ray Rothrock’s cell phone rings. Rothrock (MBA 1988) is the CEO of the cybersecurity firm Red Seal, and a higher-up at Sony was looking for his help. After the breach, he told Rothrock, the company essentially hit factory reset on their entire network. The phones were down. They were doing payroll by handwritten checks. They had burned it all down. And now they needed someone to help them rebuild it.

New year, new tactics to keep your personal info safe after Marriott data breach

Los Angeles Times  | January 14, 2019

As consumers, we’re thinking about data breaches all wrong. We ask how something like this can happen. We are shocked when 383 million people, more than the population of the United States, are potentially affected by digital evil-doers. We think nothing will happen to us. And we continue on our merry way. Wrong, wrong, wrong, and especially wrong, experts say.

Cyber resilience: not just bouncing back, but a strategy for effective cyber defense

Government Technology Insider | November 8, 2018

With Dr. Mike Lloyd, RedSeal CTO

Most discussions on cybersecurity focus on prevention, but not cyber defense. But, the unfortunate reality is, some attacks will be successful no matter how well you’ve protected your networks. The question then becomes, just how quickly can you get back online and back to business?

For the Government Technology Insider podcast, we asked Dr. Mike Lloyd, Chief Technology Officer for RedSeal about how to achieve “digital resilience” – the ability to prepare for and recover from a cyber attack.

Cyber Security Hub: How Digitally Resilient Is Your Company?

Cyber Security Hub | November 7, 2018

Unlike the game Whack-a-Mole, where the object is to clobber a mole as it pops its head out of a hole, cyber threats are becoming more targeted and harder to whack, said Ray Rothrock, CEO of RedSeal, and author of the book, Digital Resilience: Is Your Company Ready for the Next Cyber Threat? on Monday’s episode 55 of Task Force 7 Radio. Rothrock was the guest of host George Rettas, the president and CEO of Task Force 7 Radio and Task Force 7 Technologies.