Bring Back Dedicated and Local Security Teams

State of Cybercrime

Last week, I came across a tweet that asked how a normal user is supposed to make an informed decision when a security alert shows up on his screen. Great question!

I found a possible answer to that question at New York Times director of infosecurity, Runa Sandvik’s recent keynote at the O’Reilly Security Conference.

She told the attendees that many moons ago, Yahoo had three types of infosecurity departments: core, dedicated and local.

Core was the primary infosec department. The dedicated group were subject matter experts on security, still on the infosec department, but worked with other teams to help them conduct their activities in a secure way. The security pros on the local group are not officially on the infosec department, but they’re the security experts on another team.

Who knew that once upon a time dedicated and local security teams existed?! It would make natural sense that they would be the ones to assist end users on security questions, why don’t we bring them back? The short answer: it’s not so simple.

Other articles discussed:

• More to life than convenience?
• Firefox gives users privacy option
• Neural network renders faces that doesn’t exist

Panelists: Cindy Ng, Kilian Englert, Forrest Temple, Matt Radolec