Foie Gras and Cybersecurity: What Do They Have In Common?
An evening spent at Restaurant Eve yields an interesting comparison.
This past weekend my in-laws treated my husband and me to an evening out while they watched the kids. To make the most of this opportunity to dine sans French fries, food throwing and whining, we splurged on a nine-course food and wine pairing at Old Town Alexandria’s renowned Restaurant Eve. Any place promising a “gastronomic epiphany” has my vote.
After nine courses featuring goodies like terrine of foie gras, crisp veal sweetbreads, and fig leaf semifreddo, each carefully paired with the perfect wine from around the world, our palates certainly were nourished. But something was missing.
I couldn’t identify it at first, and it wasn’t until the next day that it dawned on me—I didn’t know what to look for. The dishes were complex, but my palate couldn’t discern the many nuances. Without someone telling me that lemon verbena brings out the richness of the foie gras, or that pairing it with a glass of Swiss chasselas brings out the grape’s floral qualities, I had no idea. So while I enjoyed it, I could have gotten much more from the experience had I known what to look for.
While gourmet food to cybersecurity might seem like a leap, my dining experience is remarkably similar to what organizations face when protecting their networks. Identifying would-be hackers, detecting suspicious internal activity, and minimizing vulnerability requires knowing what to look for. But unlike my culinary journey, the impact of not knowing what to look for in your network can be serious.
The key is to first establish a baseline for what’s “normal” in your network. Just like people, every network is unique, and there are no overarching set of indicators that would alert you to an issue. However, by using big data strategies to collect, store and analyze network activity, you can spot patterns over time and be better prepared to identify both external and internal threats.
Want to learn more? Join Stephen Moore, Vice President at AlphaSix, and I on Tuesday, October 27 at 11:00 am ET as we discuss how to identify what’s really going on in your network, why you should be storing more of your network data, and how analyzing that data can keep your network safe. Click here for details and I look forward to you joining us!
