Bloomberg Live’s Winning the Innovation Game event in London, on 14th November 2024, brought together thought leaders from the worlds of banking, business, and the National Health Service (NHS). The event aimed to facilitate discussions around some of the major cyber security concerns faced by organisations today, as well as how to take advantage of developments in artificial intelligence (AI).
Quorum Cyber CEO, Federico Charosky, was invited to speak on the panel session titled “Securing Data to Safeguard the Future.” Hosted by Bloomberg’s Jordan Robertson, a cyber security reporter of 20 years, Federico was joined by Ming Tang, Chief Data & Analytics Officer for NHS England, and John Whitfield, Chief Information Security Officer & Head of Global Operations & Infrastructure at Howden Group.
Watched by a packed room of attendees – and filmed live to remote viewers – the panel members discussed which emerging threats organisations should be aware of, and how they can reduce cyber risk.
As one of the world’s largest employers with over 1.3 million people working across the UK, the NHS must manage cyber security across thousands of servers and hundreds of thousands of devices. Ming Tang explained that her team is working to simplify security. Despite preventive measures, the huge volume of staff significantly puts the organisation at risk, due to high chances of any one employee clicking on a phishing email, for example.
Federico Charosky commented that in any organisation, it’s “unfair to place the burden on one individual. If one person clicks on a malicious link, then a lot of things have failed upstream.”
Jordan Robertson pointed out that no network is 100% secure, even if an organisation buys enough technology and hires enough people. Federico Charosky agreed, explaining that “the world has learned that no matter how much we invest in cyber security, things will continue to happen. How much are we willing to ask people to invest in security and still not make this problem go away. This is an escalating problem. We need to move to the resilience part of the conversation. We need to accept that we have to stay in the fight even if we’re getting punched. This has been a change of tact compared to the previous idea of investing enough to get away from the problem.”
Cyber resilience and business continuity
Federico Charosky emphasised that Quorum Cyber’s role is to improve resilience. “We need to move away from the idea that cyber security is a technology problem and think about it as a business continuity problem. We need to bring more people to the conversation.”
John Whitfield agreed and added that it’s essential for companies to get the basics right. His company, Howden Group, an international insurance provider, has acquired and integrated 66 companies while protecting security. He concurred with Federico Charosky about the IT and security teams needing to work with senior executives and board members to strengthen cyber security and resilience.
Ming Tang was on the same page: “Cyber security is a team sport and the organisations that treat it as a team sport succeed more often.”
The CrowdStrike global IT outage
Jordan Robertson raised the topic of the recent worldwide IT outage caused by a technical problem that originated in a routine CrowdStrike software update. “This is an example of cyber security moving too fast,” said Federico Charosky. “Systems are now extremely complex and interconnected. Society hasn’t had a conversation about the trade-offs between the benefits of technology and the security risks.”
Watch more and contact us
Interested to learn more? You can watch the whole event on YouTube. The Securing Data to Safeguard the Future panel session, featuring Federico Charosky, starts at 1 hour 35 minutes.
Get in touch with us if you would like to discuss any aspects of your cyber security or data security, no matter where you are on your journey.
