IBM’s Andy Piazza on the Importance of Integrating Security into Business Operations

In this week's episode of the Future of Cyber Risk podcast, David speaks to Andy Piazza, Global Head of Threat Intelligence at IBM X-Force, a threat intelligence sharing platform. They discuss the day-to-day responsibilities of IBM's threat intelligence team in creating strategy and overseeing threat collection, the ways in which threat actors are leveraging ransomware today, and why businesses should lean into their security vendors to help them stay protected. They also discuss the best skills for security practitioners, overcoming visibility challenges, and clear and concise communication is key.

Topics discussed:

• What a day in the life of the head of threat intelligence is like, and how Andy works to drive strategy, support clients, and inform threat collection teams.
• Why the biggest thing businesses get wrong is treating security as a separate department, and why securing data is a basic requirement, not a separate cost center.
• How threat actors work today, why they're focused on "double extortion," and why we need to think differently about ransomware.  
• Why businesses should rely more on their security vendor's capabilities instead of trying to build it themselves.
• How to overcome the challenges that will arise as security teams gain more visibility into OT devices.
• Advice to security practitioners, including the need for more concise communication and why it's crucial to understand your team's processes.