Thread by @timkmak

Had an eye-opening interview this week with the CEO of @FireEye, a top cybersecurity firm.

The facts are depressing.

Bottom line is: there's no such thing as a reliable cyberdefense. A dedicated attacker WILL get through eventually.

@FireEye FireEye formed over 300 'Red Teams' where companies/orgs hired them to try and break in. Break in to steal the CEO's email or affect the assembly line.

More the 90% of the time, FireEye was able to do it in five days.

And these are conscientious companies!

@FireEye FireEye's CEO Kevin Mandia says that we are almost entirely blind to what Russia, Iran and other state actors are doing on information operations. He estimates that we are tracking perhaps 3-5% of their activities.

@FireEye FireEye CEO Kevin Mandia also says that their products detect, for their clients, between 50K-70K attacks PER HOUR.

"If you're setting up any voter registration sites...just being on the Internet you're going to get scanned and attacked."

@FireEye FireEye CEO Kevin Mandia: "The bottom line is: attacks are going to come through. There's too many safe harbors on the internet, there's a whole bunch of youth on the Internet with nothing better to do."

@FireEye FireEye CEO Kevin Mandia: Russia's influence operations opened the door for other foreign actors.

"Every nation is trying to figure out what is their influence operations strategy and how can it be carried out."

@FireEye This was the cause of pessimism I had when I wrote this to @TonyRomm earlier this week. Things are this dire just in cyberattacks!

This doesn't include information ops, social media algorithms, deep fakes, companies selling private info and so on!

https://twitter.com/timkmak/status/1040225277199228929

@FireEye @TonyRomm The last few years have raised serious questions about how tech might actually be a force that does serious damage democracy.

All of us are way behind the curve on dealing with the problem. And Americans are not nearly alarmed enough about what's coming next