Cloud CISO Perspectives: What you’re missing when you miss out on mWISE Conference

Welcome to the second Cloud CISO Perspectives for August 2024. Today Google Cloud Security’s Peter Bailey talks about our upcoming Mandiant Worldwide Information Security Exchange (mWISE) Conference, and why mWISE can be one of the most valuable events this year for CISOs, security leaders, and those looking to rise through the ranks to attend.

As with all Cloud CISO Perspectives, the contents of this newsletter are posted to the Google Cloud blog. If you’re reading this on the website and you’d like to receive the email version, you can subscribe here.

--Phil Venables, VP, TI Security & CISO, Google Cloud

What you’re missing when you miss out on mWISE

By Peter Bailey, VP/GM SecOps, Google Cloud Security

When you look at the history of cybersecurity, understanding the key threats targeting your industry and prioritizing the right defensive measures across people, processes, and technologies has always been critical to a successful cyberdefense program. In addition to meeting compliance requirements, security leaders need to understand and actively manage their organization’s security posture through a complex combination of technical and process-based solutions. A vital part of that equation is having access to leading expertise on threats, and the best practices to defend against them.

mWISE is Mandiant’s annual cybersecurity and knowledge-sharing conference. It may be the only one in the world that’s produced by a vendor but is vendor-agnostic. At mWISE, security practitioners of all levels–from entry level to CISO– come together to share their unique experiences and their knowledge of strengthening their defenses.

Unlike other conferences, what happens at mWISE doesn’t stay at mWISE — and that’s by design. We want attendees to come away with a better understanding of the threat landscape, to have a stronger network of peers to rely on for sharing information, and a better sense of how the state of cybersecurity is evolving alongside the technology that it serves.

Four key questions that security leaders and practitioners discuss at the conference include:

1. Are we thinking about the right risks?
2. What can we learn from other incidents that have happened?
3. What are some of the new best practices and techniques?
4. How can we broaden and deepen our understanding of our security posture and risk management operations?

Keynote speakers this year include Kevin Mandia, founder of Mandiant and strategic security advisor, Google Cloud; Jen Easterly, director, CISA; Charles Carmakal, CTO, Mandiant Consulting; and John Hultquist, chief analyst, Mandiant Intelligence. We’ll be exploring the state of ransomware with a panel of cybersecurity luminaries, and contemplating how soon AI will be able to match human intelligence with David Eagleman, neuroscientist and author.

In addition to featuring frontline experts, critical insights, and cutting-edge trends, this year we’re adding two new tracks: Intersection of AI and Cybersecurity, and Next-Gen CISO.

When it comes to the new threats posed by the use of AI in cybersecurity, we’ll be exploring how innovative companies are using AI to strengthen defenses, automate threat detection, and counter AI-based attacks. Industry leaders at the forefront of AI-driven security innovation will share what they’ve learned thus far into the AI revolution.

The sessions in our Next-Gen CISO track are curated by current CISOs at the top 1,000 global companies, and are designed to help the next generation of security practitioners step confidently into the CISO role. We’ll be covering:

• Speaking to the board of directors on cybersecurity topics critical and mundane
• Responding to the ever-changing threat landscape, data leak, and prompt injection attacks
• Navigating regulatory compliance requirements
• Managing risks from third-party vendors
• Ensuring robust data privacy and protection
• Addressing concerns over personal litigation stemming from breaches
• Finding qualified cybersecurity talent in a challenging employment environment

I’ve always felt that mWISE is a must-attend for security leaders and practitioners who want to increase their knowledge of the current risk and threat landscape, and how others are operating in it.

We don’t face these risks in a bubble or alone. Cybersecurity is effectively a team sport supported by a large community with shared interests. Connecting with our peers can help us get impactfully better at managing the complex risks we face, and mWISE is one of the best places to do that. If you’d like to join us in September, you can register to attend mWISE in-person or virtually here.

In case you missed it

Here are the latest updates, products, services, and resources from our security teams so far this month:

• mWISE Conference 2024: Your front-row seat to the future of cybersecurity: Experts from Mandiant, Google Cloud, and the wider cybersecurity community will come together September 18-19 at mWISE in Denver, Colo. This is your chance to immerse yourself in the latest threat intelligence, cutting-edge tools, and engage with the strategic minds that are shaping the future of cybersecurity. Register today.
• Reimagine security through the power of convergence at Google Cloud Security Summit 2024: Elevate your security with a convergence of security capabilities, AI, and frontline threat intelligence, to enable the next level of proactive defense. Read more.
• Testing your LLMs differently: Security updates from our latest Cyber Snapshot Report: In our latest Cyber Snapshot Report, learn how securing LLMs is similar to (and different from) traditional web app security. Read more.
• One week wonder: How Etsy mastered the art of SIEM migration: What if we told you that it’s possible to conquer your next SIEM migration in a matter of weeks, not months? Etsy did just that. Here’s how. Read more.
• Introducing delayed destruction, a new way to protect your secrets: Delayed destruction is an important step in adding deletion prevention capabilities to Secret Manager. Here’s how it works. Read more.
• What’s new in Assured Workloads: Enable updates and new control packages: Here are the latest additions to our portfolio of software-defined controls and policies that can make supporting your compliance requirements easier on Google Cloud. Read more.
• Google Cloud expands services in Saudi Arabia, delivering enhanced data sovereignty and AI capabilities: We are excited to announce new data residency, sovereignty, security, and AI capabilities for the Google Cloud region in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Read more.
• Using dual-region buckets in Google Cloud Storage: Organizations can mitigate risks and improve regulatory compliance, data availability, and performance by using dual-region buckets in Cloud Storage. Read more.

Please visit the Google Cloud blog for more security stories published this month.

Threat Intelligence news

• Decoding PEAKLIGHT, the stealthy, memory-only malware: Mandiant has identified a new memory-only dropper using a complex, multistage infection process. This dropper decrypts and executes a PowerShell-based downloader known as PEAKLIGHT. Here’s what we know. Read more.
• ‘WireServing’ up credentials: Escalating privileges in Azure Kubernetes services: An attacker with access to a vulnerable Microsoft Azure Kubernetes services cluster could have escalated privileges and accessed credentials for services used by the cluster. Microsoft has patched the vulnerability. Read more.
• Hacking beyond dot-com: Enumerating private TLDs: During a recent engagement, Mandiant researcher Idan Ron aimed to identify top-level domains (TLDs) owned by a client to find previously uncovered attack surfaces. Finding no existing tool that met this need, Idan worked with ProjectDiscovery to create one himself. Learn how he did it. Read more.

Now hear this: Google Cloud Security and Mandiant podcasts

• Conquering SOC challenges: Leadership, burnout, and the SIEM evolution: What are the most important qualities of a successful SOC leader today? Nicole Beckwith, senior security engineering manager, Threat Operations, Kroger, explores the state of the SOC, including her approach to building and maintaining a high-functioning SOC team, and how to approach burnout, with Cloud Security podcast hosts Anton Chuvakin and Tim Peacock. Listen here.
• Anton and Tim tussle over tools: Should you trust cloud providers or choose a third party: An epic debate episode, in which our hosts Anton and Tim duke it out (proverbially) over whether you should buy the majority of cloud security tools from a cloud provider — or a third-party vendor. Listen here.
• CoSAI and why it matters to you: The universe of AI risks is broad and deep. We’ve made a lot of headway with our Secure AI Framework, David LaBianca, senior engineering director, Google, tells Anton and Tim. Here’s how SAIF intersects with the Coalition for Secure AI, how Microsoft and OpenAI got involved, and how the AI security landscape is rapidly evolving. Listen here.

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