In Focus: Threat intelligence in the private and public sectors

The In Focus mini-series examines more closely issues and topics of importance to federal agencies and contractors. Each month, Federal News Radio speaks with key stakeholders to better understand challenges and opportunities. This month focuses on Cybersecurity Threat Intelligence.

The viewpoint that RSA’s chief technology officer Zulfikar Ramzan brought to the table is the ability to put the cybersecurity threat intelligence discussion within agencies in perspective with the commercial world.  He reinforced the concept of a dichotomy in the world of threat intelligence.  There is a balance in the need for trust and speed, but often times agencies require protracted reviews.

Zulfikar commented that the commercial world is suffering from many of the same challenges that the federal world faces. The primary one is talent.  It has been estimated that there an estimated 1 million jobs available in cybersecurity.

Host

John Gilroy, Host of Federal Tech Talk, Federal News Radio

John Gilroy has been a member of the Washington D.C. technology community for over twenty years. In 2007 he began weekly interviews on Federal News Radio called “Federal Tech Talk with John Gilroy.”   His 428 interviews provides the basis for profitable referral business. In 2009 he created a successful breakfast club of previous radio guests called The Technology Leadership Roundtable. He has been instrumental in two of his guests forming their own radio shows:  Derrick Dortch with “Fed Access” and Aileen Black and Gigi Schumm with “Women in Washington.”

In 2011 he began teaching a course in social media marketing at Georgetown University; in March of 2014, John won the Tropaia Award for Outstanding Faculty.  John conducts monthly corporate training for large companies on how to leverage social media to generate revenue.

Guest

Zulfikar Ramzan, Chief Technology Officer, RSA

Dr. Zulfikar Ramzan serves as the Chief Technology Officer of RSA, the Security Division of EMC. In this role, he is responsible for leading the development of the company’s technology strategy and bringing to market the innovations that help protect RSA customers from the growing number of advanced threats. Prior to joining RSA, Dr. Ramzan served as Chief Technology Officer of Elastica and, preceding that, as Chief Scientist of Sourcefire (acquired by Cisco in October 2013). Before joining Sourcefire via its acquisition of Immunet in 2010, he was Technical Director of Symantec’s Security Technology and Response division. In all of these roles, Dr. Ramzan has leveraged his expertise across numerous domains of cybersecurity and large scale data analytics to bring innovations to market that have protected customers from a large variety of threats to their information assets.

Dr. Ramzan has co-authored over 50 technical articles, and two books including Crimeware: Understanding New Attacks and Defenses, Addison-Wesley Professional, 2008. He also has over 50 granted patents. Dr. Ramzan was selected and served as General Chair of Crypto 2010, the premier conference in the field of Cryptography. Beyond that, he is a frequent public speaker and has briefed both numerous media outlets including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, and Reuters as well as members of the United States Congress on cyber-security trends and issues. Dr. Ramzan has produced a number of online videos on cybersecurity trends that have collectively been viewed over a million times and he has served as a guest faculty for the educational non-profit Khan Academy.

Dr. Ramzan holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His doctoral advisor was Professor Ronald L. Rivest, who co-founded RSA Data Security.

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