Cybersecurity from a different perspective

Federal Tech Talk

Cybersecurity from a different perspective

Randy Wood, vice president of F5 Networks, joins host John Gilroy to discuss network application security and how his company can help your agency with its...

John Gilroy

September 7, 2015 9:56 pm

< a min read

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This week Randy Wood, vice president of F5 Networks sat down to talk about network application security. His introductory remarks take a look at cybersecurity from a new perspective.

Randy Wood, vice president, F5 Networks

Wood maintains that 90% of the effort at cybersecurity is directed at the firewall and IDS systems. This is juxtaposed to the fact that 75% of attacks are at applications and application access.The answer? Start giving some priority to the “apps.”

During the interview he brings up another issue that is not on the radar of most cybersecurity professionals. That is the idea of encrypting data as it leaves the network. He calls this “outbound” data. He argues cogently that decrypting outbound data is the key to security.

Finally, Wood mentions the fact that approximately 30% of web sites use SSL. He maintains that an approach that includes “SSL everywhere” would help protect high value assets such as medical records and banking information.