At a 2022 RSA Conference keynote, technologist Bruce Schneier asserted that artificial intelligence agents will start to hack human systems — and what that will mean for us.

RSA CONFERENCE 2022 — "Nice to see you all again," Bruce Schneier told the audience at his keynote for the in-person return of RSA Conference, taking off his trademark cap. "It's kinda neat. Kinda a little scary." 

Schneier is a security technologist, researcher, and lecturer at Harvard Kennedy School. He has a long list of publications, including books from as early as 1993 and as recent as 2019's _We Have Root_, with a new one launching in January 2023. But he's best known for his long-running newsletter Crypto-Gram and blog Schneier on Security. And his upcoming book is about hacking.

To Schneier, hacking does not necessarily mean computer systems. "Think about the tax code," he said. "It's not computer code, but it's code. It's a series of algorithms with inputs and outputs."

Because the tax code is a system, it can be hacked, Schneier said. "The tax code has vulnerabilities. We call them tax loopholes. The tax code has exploits. We call them tax avoidance strategies. And there's an entire industry of black-hat hackers — we call them tax accountants and tax attorneys," he added, to audience laughter.

He defined hacking as "a clever, unintended exploitation of a system, which subverts the rules of the system at the expense of some other part of the system." He noted that any system can be hacked, from the tax code to professional hockey, where a player — it's contested just who — started using a curved stick to improve their ability to lift the puck. That player hacked the hockey system.

"Even the best-thought-out sets of rules will be incomplete or inconsistent," Schneier said. "It'll have ambiguity. It'll have things the designers haven't thought of. And as long as there are people who want to subvert the goals of the system, there will be hacks. 

"What I want to talk about here is what happens when AIs start hacking."

**Rise of the Machines**

When AIs start hacking human systems, Schneier said, the impact will be something completely new. 

"It won't just be a difference in degree but a difference in kind, and it'll culminate in AI systems hacking other AI systems and us humans being collateral damage," he said, then paused. "So that's a bit of hyperbole, probably my back-cover copy, but none of that requires any far-future science- fiction technology. I'm not postulating a singularity. I'm not assuming intelligent androids. I'm actually not even assuming evil intent on the part of anyone.

"The hacks I think about don't even require major breakthroughs in AI. They'll improve as AI gets more sophisticated, but we can see shadows of them in operation today. And the hacking will come naturally as AIs become more advanced in learning, understanding, and problem-solving."

He traced the evolution of AI hackers using examples of competitions. Technically it's the human developers who compete in events like DARPA's 2016 Cyber Grand Challenge or China's Robot Hacking Games, but the AIs operate autonomously once set into motion.

"We know how this goes, right?" he asked. "The AIs will improve in capability every year, and we humans stay about the same, and eventually the AIs surpass the humans."

While he acknowledged that bad actors might set up AI systems to hack financial systems for profit or mayhem, Schneier also posited that an AI might hack human systems independently and without intent. 

"\[That\] is more dangerous because we might never know it happened. And this is because of the explainability problem," he said, "which I will now explain."

**Explaining the Explainability Problem**

Schneier set up the discussion of explainability with a literary reference. In Douglas Adams' _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_, a race of superintelligent beings called the Magratheans "build the universe's most powerful computer — Deep Thought — to answer the ultimate question to life, the universe, and everything. And the answer is?" he queried. An audience member obliged by answering "42."

The Magratheans were naturally not happy with this opaque answer, and they asked the computer to explain what it meant. "Deep Thought was unable to explain its answer or even tell you what the question was," Schneier said. "That's the explainability problem."

He added: "Modern AIs are essentially black boxes. Data goes in one end, an answer comes out the other. And it can be impossible to understand how the system reached its conclusion even if you're a programmer and look at the code."  

Schneier then discussed Deep Patient, a medical AI meant to analyze patient data and predict diseases. While the system performed well, he said, it doesn't give the doctors any explanation to help them see why it predicted a disease.

Reward hacking refers to an AI achieving a goal in a way its designer didn't intend. The audience enjoyed Schneier's description of an evolution simulator that "instead of building bigger muscles or longer legs, it actually grew taller so it could fall over a finish line faster than anybody could run."

He also used the examples of King Midas and genies to underscore the human problem of poor specification, where the granting of wishes too literally leads to misery. 

"But here's the thing," he said. "There's no way to outsmart the genie. Whatever you wish for, he will always be able to grant it in a way that you wish he hadn't. The genie will always be able to hack your wish."

And because of how the human mind works, "any goal we specify will necessarily be incomplete," he said. "We can't completely specify goals to an AI, and AIs won't be able to completely understand context."

Schneier then used the 2015 Volkswagen emissions scandal to set up an example of an AI hack that we wouldn't be able to detect because of the explainability problem. He said he imagines having an AI system design engine software to be both efficient and able to pass an emissions test. In such a system, the AI might hit on the same solution the Volkswagen engineers did — that is, fudge the emissions data by turning on emission controls only during testing — while not telling humans how it accomplished its goals. Thus the company might celebrate their great new design without even realizing that it's a hack and a fraud.

He expanded that to the real-world example of recommendation algorithms that push extremist content "because that's what people respond to." And that's an example that has real-world effects, radicalizing vulnerable people and causing them to entrench in false beliefs and sometimes even take drastic actions.

Schneier talked about research into how to avoid such negative unintended effects. One solution, value alignment, attempts to teach systems to respect human moral code. "Good luck" specifying human values or allowing an AI to learn them by self-training, he said.

In defending against AI hacking, he said, "what matters is the amount of ambiguity in the system." AIs are not able to work well with ambiguity. But that seems to be a limited solution that AIs could evolve to surmount.

**AI Hacks and the Real World**

Partly because of their lucrative nature and partly because of the structured code, Schneier expects financial systems to be one of the first real-world systems affected by AI hacks. Talking about the tax code, for example, he asked, "How many loopholes will it find that we don't know about?"

Even worse might be the AI message bots that could be infesting your Twitter time line already, pushing messages and interacting realistically. "It will influence what we think is normal, and what we think others think," Schneier warned. "That's a scale change."

But perhaps the most fraught element is the role AI is already playing in people's lives. 

"AIs are making parole decisions \[about\] who receives bank loans, helps screen job candidates \[and\] applicants for college, people who apply for government services," he noted. Because we can't tell why an AI made the decision, it will not seem fair to those denied — and indeed, it might well be unfair and based on unwarranted or underanalyzed parameters like a ZIP code.

And as with so much, he pointed out, it will be the powerful who benefit and the masses who suffer. "It's not that we \[gestures around the room\] are going to discover hacks in the tax codes," Schneier said. "It's going to be the investment bankers."  

He closed on a note of hope, though. While AI can certainly be used to find and exploit software vulnerabilities, he pointed out that they can also be used to find and _fix_ those vulnerabilities. 

"It identifies all the vulnerabilities and then it patches them" before the software gets released, he suggested. "You could imagine \[this AI\] being built into the software development tools. It's part of the compiler.

"We can imagine a world in which software vulnerabilities are a thing of the past," he added. "Kinda weird, but that's what would happen."

Schneier cautioned that during the transition period in which old vulnerable codes — computer or human — were still open and the new ones were still being vetted, black-hat AIs would still have a rich opening. However, he said, "While AI hackers can be employed by the offense and the defense, in the end it favors the defense. We need to be able to quickly and efficiently respond to hacks," though.

Human systems need to have the same agility as software, he said.

"The overarching solution is people," he said. "We're much better off as a society if we decide as people what technology's role in our future should be."

Why AIs Will Become Hackers

ReliaQuest CTO Joe Partlow joins Dark Reading's Terry Sweeney at Dark Reading News Desk during RSA Conference to discuss extended detection response — and acquisition news.

Customers consistently struggle to get from reactivity to a proactive security strategy, but combining extended detection response (XDR) with threat intelligence is a big step in that direction, says ReliaQuest CTO Joe Partlow. And in that same vein, Partlow describes points to the company’s planned acquisition of threat intel vendor Digital Shadows as a central move to reducing risk and improving resilience for customers. The combined entity will create a force multiplier for aiding the detection, investigation, and response to potential breaches, Partlow adds.

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ReliaQuest Bolsters Extended Detection With Threat Intelligence

SAN FRANCISCO – Today, in partnership with the Coalition to Reduce Cyber Risk (CR2), 37 companies and organizations have pledged to enhance cyber resiliency and counter evolving cross-border cyber threats such as the growth of ransomware. Signers to this groundbreaking pledge from eight countries have promised to:

·         encourage the development, evolution and implementation of risk-based approaches that rely on consensus-based standards and risk management best practices, such as ISO/IEC 27110 and 27103, or the NIST Cybersecurity Framework;

·         support efforts of our vendors and supply chain contributors to adopt risk-based cybersecurity approaches in order to help small businesses flourish while improving the resiliency of the cyber ecosystem;

·         incorporate ISO/IEC (or other widely accepted international) cybersecurity standards as a foundation of our cybersecurity policies and controls wherever applicable and feasible; and

·         periodically reassess our cybersecurity policies and controls against revisions to ISO/IEC cybersecurity standards and actively participate in industry-driven initiatives to improve those standards.

_“CR2 is committed to driving a globally-aligned approach for managing cyber risk. Thirty-Seven organizations from eight countries have signed the Cyber Risk Management Pledge, demonstrating the breadth of usage of international standards such as ISO/IEC 27110 and 27103, as well as the NIST Cybersecurity Framework and associated sector profiles.”_ said Benjamin Flatgard, President of CR2 and Executive Director of Technology and Cybersecurity Policy and Partnerships at J.P. Morgan Chase.  He added

_“Governments should embed widely used international standards at the core of their national cyber policies to facilitate a seamless approach to shared cyber risk.”_

For more information on the CR2 and the pledge, or if your company or organization is interested in joining the pledge, please visit https://www.crx2.org/

##

**Cyber Risk Management Pledge**

The signatories to this pledge understand that in order to enhance cyber resiliency and counter evolving cross-border cyber threats such as the growth of ransomware, we must enable the seamless implementation of risk-based approaches to cybersecurity around the world. 

Internationally recognized cybersecurity frameworks and standards that are based upon the principles of risk management and relevant across sectors support such implementation by strengthening consistency and continuity among interconnected sectors and throughout global supply chains. 

Increased and ongoing adoption of these frameworks and international standards by companies and governments around the world will mitigate cyber risks and facilitate economic growth. To further advance adoption of international approaches to cybersecurity risk management, we commit to:

·         Encourage the development, evolution and implementation of risk-based approaches based on consensus-based frameworks, standards and risk management best practices, such as ISO/IEC 27110 and 27103, or the NIST Cybersecurity Framework;

·         Support efforts of our vendors and supply chain contributors to adopt risk-based cybersecurity approaches in order to help small businesses flourish while improving the resiliency of the cyber ecosystem;

·         Incorporate ISO/IEC 27110 and 27103, the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, or other widely accepted international cybersecurity standards as a foundation of our cybersecurity policies and controls wherever applicable and feasible; and

·         Periodically reassess our cybersecurity policies and controls against revisions to such cybersecurity standards and actively participate in industry-driven initiatives to improve those standards.

A commitment to internationally recognized cyber risk management approaches and frameworks that are relevant across sectors can bring widespread economic benefits, help governments achieve their policy goals, bolster collective security, and enhance cyber resiliency across the ecosystem. 

AT&T

AWS

Cisco

Citrix

Cybastion Institute of Technology

Cybereason

Exiger

IBM

JP Morgan Chase

Lumen

Mastercard

Microsoft

NetScout

NTT

Palo Alto Networks

Rakuten Symphony

Redhat

Schneider Electric

Tenable 

Trellix

Verizon

Asia Internet Coalition (AIC)

BSA | The Software Alliance

Coalition of Service Industries (CSI)

Coalition to Reduce Cyber Risk (CR2) 

Cyber Risk Institute

CyberPeace Institute

Cybersecurity Coalition

The DCRO Institute

Health-ISAC

Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC)

Information Technology Industry (ITI)

Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA)

U.S. Chamber of Commerce

United States Council for International Business (USCIB)

US-India Strategic Policy Forum (USISPF)

37 Major Companies and Organizations Pledge to Enhance Cyber Resiliency and Counter Evolving Global Threats

Organizations can no longer rely on traditional responses to ransomware.

Imagine the scene: A devastating ransomware attack has immobilized a large manufacturing company. It's not possible to ship or sell any products, or to contact the company's customers. The whole supply chain has been compromised. To make matters worse, two backup locations are also inaccessible. Unfortunately, this is not a what-if scenario. It happened, despite the best efforts of the company's security and business operations teams. Even though the organization had a Plan A _and_ a Plan B, it wasn't enough to deal with modern-day ransomware.

Too often, a traditional response to a ransomware attack is focused solely on a technical investigation. However, the ripple effects of ransomware go far beyond a system reboot and security housekeeping. As our manufacturing company's predicament highlights, there's often a gap between what needs to be done and shared across the enterprise and current incident response plans. Organizations' leaders must recognize that ransomware is a business risk, not simply a cybersecurity problem, and they should take the right steps in the right order to handle any crisis.

**Ransomware Motivations Evolve**

Although ransomware has been around a long time, threat actor tactics and motivations have recently changed. Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, threat actors on Dark Web Russian language forums — particularly ones associated with ransomware — are sometimes choosing targets based on political motives rather than just financial gains. The ideological divide has led many underground actors to call for the return of ransomware groups to the mainstream underground and to reinstate the targeting of Western entities, especially in the resources, government, banking, and critical infrastructure sectors.

**New Tactics Open the Door**

We’re also seeing new threat actors introducing fresh ideas and evolving tactics. For example, some attacks are more destructive than disruptive, involving deleting or damaging backups. This destroys Plan B and makes it harder for a compromised target to get back up and running. It can also damage a business's brand and reputation.

Making life easier for threat actors is access to "plug-and-play" tools, such as ransomware-as-a-service products that can be easily purchased on the Dark Web and just as easily deployed. And there is also the growing interest in network access sales — when cybercriminals offer sophisticated and accomplished threat actors a shortcut to a compromised network for a price. For example, in February the Accenture threat intelligence team found that an underground site user, "GodLevel," was advertising access to a subdomain belonging to an identified Ukrainian agricultural exchange. An attacker could potentially use compromised system access to elevate user privileges and make use of associated domains to obtain personally identifiable information (PII) and payment card data, resell exfiltrated data, and deploy malicious software such as ransomware.

When it comes to ransomware tactics, one of the new flavors is extortion, where threat actors initiate a public business disinformation campaign aimed at eroding confidence and public trust in a business.

We're even seen threat actors directly contacting individuals whose data has been stolen from a company when the company refuses to pay a ransom. So, while companies are trying to deal with cyber complexities and get their business back up and running, they may also have to defend themselves against an extended ecosystem of stakeholders.

Disruptive times have resulted in a surge in attacks, and it is possible that Russia's invasion of Ukraine could continue this trend. Recent analysis from the Accenture cyber-incident forensic response team, based on engagements conducted between January and December 2021, shows a year-on-year increase of 107% in ransomware and extortion attacks and 33% in intrusion volume from ransomware and extortion. These growing threats put pressure on a traditional crisis response and accentuate the vital role of coordinated planning and communications.

**Closing the Communications Gap**

When all areas of the enterprise work together — driven from the top — the whole business benefits. Here are some steps to consider to help close the gaps that open the door to ransomware and extortion:

*   **Lead with leaders:** Cybersecurity professionals often run tabletop exercises, but they should evolve such exercises to include executive-level simulations. This enables organizations to test their defenses against a typical ransomware attack directly with business leaders — while simulating the risk and adrenalin of a "real-life" attack scenario.
*   **Avoid the domino effect:** Taking an uncoordinated first step can lead an organization down a path that can hinder its recovery. By creating a playbook and having a clear plan for the whole business, overseen by the C-suite, organizations can avoid the domino effect of "wrong place, wrong time" actions.
*   **Report with rigor:** The devil is in the details. To protect against ransomware, maintain standard cybersecurity patching hygiene practices and incorporate an intelligence-driven approach to vulnerability and attack surface management programs. To be resilient, organizations should better understand internal reporting obligations and act with full transparency, in a thoughtful and factual way.

**Conclusion**

By understanding — and preparing for — the full implications of a ransomware attack on an organization, recovery can be faster and easier. However, business leaders are often ill-prepared, especially when it comes to the essential communications needed to inform and instruct all stakeholders affected by an attack. It's time for business leaders to look with fresh eyes at how they handle ransomware and extortion. And the emphasis should be on prioritizing effective crisis management across the enterprise.

How Poor Communication Opens the Door to Ransomware and Extortion

Seemplicity's Ravid Circus joins Dark Reading's Terry Sweeney at Dark Reading News Desk during RSA Conference to talk up accelerating time-to-remediation and reducing risk.

Scanning and remediation are hobbled without some robust automation to power them, says Ravid Circus, co-founder and chief product officer of Seemplicity, who's looking to accelerate time-to-remediation and reducing risk. Circus also describes how automated security platforms can be better integrated into the management framework, and offers some general tips for ways security pros can drive down risk.

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Security & Productivity: The New Power Couple

Anjuna Security's Ayal Yogev joins Dark Reading's Terry Sweeney at Dark Reading News Desk during RSA Conference to discuss how confidential computing will improve cloud security.

Ayal Yogev, CEO and co-founder of Anjuna Security, describes the emerging model of Confidential Computing, as well as how it leverages enclaves and creates Trusted Execution Environments, which isolates data from unauthorized access. Yogev also discusses how he expects Confidential Computing to improve security for cloud computing, especially with its multi-party service delivery model.

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Anjuna Security: Tapping ‘Confidential Computing’ to Secure Data, Users, and Organizations

DeepSurface's Tim Morgan joins Dark Reading's Terry Sweeney at Dark Reading News Desk during RSA Conference to discuss how to fortify vulnerability management.

DeepSurface's co-founder and CTO Tim Morgan talks about how context awareness and risk-based prioritization can fortify the processes and activity associated with vulnerability management. Morgan also encourages security pros to look beyond CVSS scores to consider other data types when performing risk assessments, and he’s got some tips for better communicating risks to boards of directors.

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DeepSurface Security: Risk-Based Prioritization Adds New Depth to Vulnerability Management

Compromised routers, VPNs, and NAS devices from Cisco, Citrix, Pulse, Zyxel, and others are all being used as part of an extensive cyber espionage campaign.

State-sponsored cyberattackers affiliated with China are actively building out a large network of attack infrastructure by compromising targets in the public and private spheres.

According to a joint alert from Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the National Security Agency (NSA), and the FBI, the attackers are targeting major telecom companies and network service providers with a set of exploits for known vulnerabilities in a variety of routers, VPNs, and other networking gear, as well as network-attached storage (NAS) devices.

The network devices are then being used as additional access points to route command-and-control (C2) traffic and act as midpoints to carry out network intrusions on other entities, according to the alert — all bent on stealing sensitive information.

The cyberattackers "typically conduct their intrusions by accessing compromised servers called hop points from numerous China-based IP addresses resolving to different Chinese ISPs," the Feds noted. "The cyber-actors typically obtain the use of servers by leasing remote access directly or indirectly from hosting providers. They use these servers to register and access operational email accounts, host C2 domains, and interact with victim networks. Cyber-actors \[also\] use these hop points as an obfuscation technique when interacting with victim networks."

On the obfuscation front, CISA said it has observed the groups monitoring network defenders' accounts and actions, modifying their ongoing campaign as needed to remain undetected.

The groups also "often mix their customized toolset with publicly available tools, especially by leveraging tools that are native to the network environment, to obscure their activity by blending into the noise or normal activity of a network."

    

Commonly exploited bugs used by China-linked threat actors. (Source: NSA/CISA/FBI)

To avoid compromise, users should apply available patches, disable unnecessary ports and protocols, and replace end-of-life infrastructure, the agencies noted.

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China-Sponsored Cyberattackers Target Networking Gear to Build Widespread Attack Infrastructure

Concentric AI's Karthik Krishnan joins Dark Reading's Terry Sweeney at Dark Reading News Desk during RSA Conference to discuss how artificial intelligence has transformed the security landscape.

Concentric AI's Karthik Krishnan joins Dark Reading's Terry Sweeney at Dark Reading News Desk during RSA Conference to discuss how artificial intelligence has transformed the security landscape.

Dark Reading's Terry Sweeney in conversation with Karthik Krishnan, CEO and founder of Concentric AI

Informa Tech

Artificial intelligence has transformed the security landscape and given security professionals powerful tools to do their jobs more efficiently, says Karthik Krishnan, CEO and founder of Concentric AI. Krishnan also discusses where AI is best implemented and how the technology is helping to reduce data volumes that inundate most active security operations centers (SOCs).

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Concentric: How To Maximize Your AI Returns, In and Out of the SOC

It only takes one successful attack to spell disaster for a company. Learn how to protect your company with this email security best practice guide.

The number of emails sent _each day_ is expected to top 330 billion this year.

Cybercriminals know this, with phishing and other email-targeting tactics the top attack vectors ― because they work so well. And as we discussed in the first article of this two-part series, "For MSPs, Next-Gen Email Security Is a Must," advances in automation have made it easy to run these attacks at scale, with no organization too small to target anymore.

It only takes one successful attack to spell disaster. What can you do to protect your company? Although proper email security is never a walk in the park, we have prepared a checklist of email security best practices for small and midsize businesses (SMBs), divided into three categories: organizational culture, security posture management, and technology stack.

**Organizational Culture**

A security-first organizational culture bolsters email safety by prioritizing the following:

1.  **Clear policies:** Get IT and business leaders to co-formulate clear security policies, including email-specific ones.
2.  **Continuous reinforcement:** Make email security practices part of employee onboarding, ongoing training, and performance reviews.
3.  **Peer buy-in:** Buy-in for the company's security strategy from _non-security_ peers is crucial for good security outcomes for SMBs.
4.  **Learning from incidents:** Leverage email security incidents to address vulnerabilities and finetune policies.

**Security Posture Management**

Here are four best practices for email security posture management that SMBs can adopt:

1.  **Timely incident response:** A _companywide_ incident response plan (that includes notifications, responsibilities, response and mitigation workflows, reporting, etc.) must be regularly tested and updated.
2.  **Data loss prevention (DLP) program:** A DLP program incurs costs, but the ROI is clear when a company can achieve near-zero RPO/RTO outcomes in response to ransomware or other data theft exploits.
3.  **Systematic management of email passwords:** UK survey: 82% of security breaches over the previous year started with weak email passwords. IT should enforce strong, unique passwords that are updated regularly.
4.  **Clear reporting:** Be able to _demonstrate_ diligent tracking of email security metrics and effectively _address_ incidents and vulnerabilities.

**Staying on Top of Technology**

Cyber threats are constantly evolving, increasing the pressure on businesses to optimize and modernize their protection. Ensure that your current email security stack is best of breed and up to date:

1.  **Proactive refreshing of email security stack:** SMBs with a process in place to proactively refresh their security technology stack achieve superior security outcomes.
2.  **SaaS:** A SaaS email security solution ensures continuous improvement while eliminating infrastructure overhead.
3.  **Two-factor authentication (2FA):** An additional authentication step considerably hardens email security. There are plenty of freeware and commercial 2FA solutions out there.
4.  **Multiple, overlapping layers of defense:** Sophisticated exploits require a multilayer defense based on email security gateways; anti-phishing or anti-malware tools; and threat intelligence solutions.

**Using an MSP**

MSPs have the resources and experience to deploy a well-integrated, end-to-end solution that protects their customers' email flows. The benefits of using an MSP include:

*   24/7/365 threat detection and response

*   Scalability

*   Easy integration with existing email infrastructure

*   Flexibility and configurability

It's a win-win solution: The MSP works against the weaponization of email while the SMB can focus its resources on core business activities.

**Acronis and Email Security**

Whether a business manages email security itself or turns to an MSP, having an integrated data protection and cybersecurity solution that secures an organization's online assets — including email — is critical. Learn how Acronis can help with its cyber protection solutions, featuring ML-based anti-malware, antivirus, and anti-ransomware protection, fail-proof patching, continuous backups, safe and rapid recovery, global threat monitoring, smart alerts, and more.

**About the Author**

    

Candid Wüest is the VP of Cyber Protection Research at Acronis, where he researches new threat trends and comprehensive protection methods. Previously, he worked for more than 16 years as the tech lead for Symantec's global security response team. Wüest is a frequent speaker at security-related conferences, including RSAC and AREA41, and is an adviser for the Swiss federal government on cyber-risks. He holds a master's in computer science from ETH Zurich and various certifications and patents.

Source

DARKReading