Cybersecurity confidence gets a C- . How to improve your grade in 2017

The City of San Diego seems to have all the building blocks in place to make the smart city an exceptionally safe one when it comes to cyber attacks. Deputy director and CISO Gary Hayslip has built out the city’s security operations center, he’s partnering with innovative security vendors and startups, and conferring with law enforcement to keep up with the latest threats. He has the backing of the mayor and city executives, with plenty of funding, and he’s hiring more staff.

Yet when asked how he would grade his organization’s ability to detect and mitigate cyber threats, he offered a sobering assessment.

“I would probably say about a C+,” Hayslip says. “I’m realistic. There’s a lot of risk out there. We’re dealing with about a million attacks a day on our networks. I’ve got 40 departments, 24 networks and 40,000 endpoints” to protect. As the smart city adds more IoT devices connecting streetlights, stoplights and HVAC systems to the network, the threat surface will only grow.

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