Kate Knyzewski Has Seen Perceptions on Cyber Shift

Kate Knyzewski, a director in Booz Allen’s cyber practice, has worked with partners around the globe, supporting federal agency missions to make the world a safer place. It’s a role that requires figuring out new ways to bring together data, advanced automation, and technology to improve security and reduce risk—a complex challenge that she finds gratifying.

During her more than 10 years working in cybersecurity, Kate has witnessed a significant shift in the way many organizations think about—and act on—cyber risk. “I have watched the perception shift from cybersecurity being seen as something that slows down deployment at the end of a project to something that is now considered essential to business and mission.”

We recently had a chance to talk to Kate about the current state of the industry and what’s being done to better protect organizations from cyber risk at a time of rapid technological change. Read on to learn more. 

Federal agencies are facing complex cybersecurity challenges, and Booz Allen is investing in addressing these challenges now and with an eye toward the future.  With each new advancement in IT, there is always a security balance that needs to be achieved. We’re prioritizing investments aimed at protecting systems, networks, and data from various forms of cyber threats. These investments include zero-trust architecture, risk-management framework automation, and multi-layered cyber threat defense. 

Anticipating cyber challenges involves proactive strategies to stay ahead of potential threats. I like to say that cybersecurity is treated a lot like insurance. It’s something you have that you hope you never have to use, that is always working in the background—and when you do need it, you hope it covers everything.

Cybersecurity is also about managing risk at the rapid pace of IT change. For example, for one of our clients, every cybersecurity initiative must be balanced to ensure that what we support has a direct impact on securing individuals’ data and services so that investments can continue to improve the end-user experience. Businesses and governments have finite budgets and infinite customers to keep happy.  Understanding and prioritizing the protection of high-value assets, improving the maturity of zero trust architecture, reducing the attack surface through migration to secure cloud environments, reducing time to secure and authorize systems by automating antiquated documentation processes, and building security into new technology development in a low-code/no-code DevSecOps lifecycle, all lead to efficiency across the enterprise. 

The integration of cybersecurity and infrastructure operations is paramount. It serves to symbolize the convergence of the digital and physical domains.

Infrastructure systems are increasingly monitored, managed, and controlled through sophisticated cyber mechanisms. A CIO’s primary concern will be, “What is the current status of my systems?” Addressing this question requires a unified approach from cybersecurity and operations to deliver a comprehensive overview—whether the issue at hand is performance-related or a potential cyber threat. These teams must remain tightly coordinated, maintaining constant communication and collaboration. Harmonizing these operations provides a unified view of cybersecurity and operations and is essential to safeguarding security, enhancing efficiency, and ensuring the reliability of vital mission-critical systems. 

From a visibility and analytics perspective, an organization needs a robust and integrated zero-trust approach to be able to collect both operational network performance and cyber data for enterprise visibility and situational awareness. For example, network flow monitoring protocols can provide information on network utilization and performance which is key to addressing end-user performance issues but can also be used for cyber incident response and anomaly detection. Integration of cyber and network operations is key to achieving end-to-end visibility and operational efficiencies. 

First, agencies need to view their threat landscapes in the same way that their adversaries do: by monitoring the flow of data and communications protocols across cyberspace. When adversaries devise strategies for digital conflict, they don’t view the field offices, the IT organization, and the customer-facing teams as separate targets. In one cyber battlespace, the digital and physical realms converge. To adversaries, the target-rich environment of an agency is one cyber battlespace.

Second, an agency must accept that tomorrow’s threats will likely eclipse yesterday’s. Cybersecurity is an enduring challenge. Securing one cyber battlespace requires a holistic view of desired outcomes and the tools for innovation that support those outcomes. Agencies must adopt leading strategies such as data-driven cybersecurity and zero trust to quickly shift and remain agile. Introducing a zero trust assessment and maturity strategy can support the identification of critical areas today that will be better addressed tomorrow.

Third, an agency must prioritize fostering operational collaboration. Too often, an agency’s cyber functions are isolated, with siloed missions, resources, and capabilities creating shortfalls and disconnects. Divisions must commit to sharing information quickly and openly to make it actionable.  Agencies need to bring divisions together to work in unison and—very importantly—hold each other accountable to mobilize their internal cyber tech and innovation base.

Internally it’s making sure that our workforce has opportunities to develop their skills and keep up with new technology. It’s about opening the aperture and clearing bias about what constitutes a cyber professional while creating pathways for people who may be thinking about cyber and have the aptitude but have no idea where to start.  Our people want to be hands-on and more than consultants—they are engineers who want to get into a lab and break things. Without changing how we think about who fits these roles today, we won’t be able to keep up with our threats tomorrow. We are already working towards filling the need for cyber staff with dynamic thinking to address emerging threats from IoT and medical device security and leaning forward in artificial intelligence, 5G, and data science.