Tony Cole, vice president and global government chief technology officer at FireEye (Nasdaq: FEYE), has said federal agencies should establish an intelligence-led cybersecurity strategy that transitions the focus from regulatory compliance toward risk mitigation.
The adoption of an intelligence-driven strategy calls for agencies to know their adversaries and the tools these adversaries use in order to protect computer networks from potential cyber attacks, Cole wrote.
Government information technology leaders should gather threat intelligence data on potential cyber threat actors and then use that data to look for troubles in computer networks and gain additional insights on potential adversaries.
œFrom all that internal and external intelligence, agencies can begin to automate their security structure, eliminate false positives and create playbooks that help them orchestrate quick responses to cyber incidents so their security teams can focus on more complex problems, he added.
Cole urged agencies to prevent œdata exfiltration through a lockdown on critical information networks in the event of a breach.
He also called on agencies to conduct cybersecurity hygiene through automatic deployment of security patches and the use of hardware that works with the latest operating systems.
