Videos

Christina: We're here at RSA 2019. I had the good fortune to bump into Michelle and Robin of BAE Systems, and we're talking about The Intelligence Network. So, Robin, could you give us a little background on what The Intelligence Network is and what its mission is?

Robin: Yeah. So, The Intelligence Network is an industry initiative that we launched in July last year, in 2018, to safeguard society in the digital age. So, trying to tackle some of the really big-picture challenges that we face as a society that individuals alone wouldn't be able to tackle or individual organizations wouldn't.

And so we're trying to improve collaboration, simplify some of these problems, and bring a bit of certainty into what can be a very uncertain space, and, yeah, try and tackle some of those big-picture items by the end of 2025.

Christina: And, you know, I'm curious, also, Michelle, how it's different in the U.S. with The Intelligence Network. I know that we now have 1,200 members in The Intelligence Network, which is fabulous. And what is the initiative that we have in the U.S. to bring The Intelligence Network here?

Michelle: Oh, sure. So it's been a little challenging going into the U.S. We have different aspects to share, threat intelligence information, different types of information sharing groups, but we don't have a lot of places where we can really explore collaboration and innovation in the security space. So this provides a really interesting opportunity to not just work within the United States and United States partners but to look overseas and look more globally where we share some of these problems in the digital world and we can learn from our partners overseas.

Christina: So, the reason I got involved in The Intelligence Network is that it's about bringing together communities to crowdsource security and to come up with solutions that we wouldn't otherwise think of.

Robin: We have a massive problem from a cyber-skills perspective. Everyone knows that, so they can't get enough skilled/trained people. So, if there are some of these problems that, instead of trying to tackle them 10, 100, 1,000 times over, if we can tackle those problems once and share how we think we should solve those problems, that's got to be a good thing.

Christina: Robin, I'm curious, what are the initiatives that we're focused on right now in The Intelligence Network? I believe that we've got one prime mission at the moment.

Robin: Yeah. So the first topic that we're tackling is around cyber fraud. So, this is obviously a very big topic. Crime is increasingly moving online. Criminals are taking advantage of digital technology, in some cases a lot more rapidly and faster than businesses themselves. And that kind of increases the disparity between the criminal world and those of us that are trying to go about legitimate lives and businesses.

So, how do we tackle those fraud problems that are occurring in, or manifesting now in cyberspace, in the digital world?

Christina: So, Michelle, I know that The Intelligence Network began in the UK, and I know it's a global initiative, but I know that there are special concerns and challenges for the U.S. So, could you articulate for us some of those issues and possible benefits of The Intelligence Network in the U.S.?

Michelle: There's a lot of activity happening here in the United States. Here at RSA, we get a real chance to see some of the innovation that's happening across the sector. And we leverage our sectors differently here than in others, the health care sector, banking and finance, some of the others where we sometimes can share commonalities with our foreign partners, and others that are uniquely us.

But what that meant was we had to come up with our ways to solve problems as we deal with fraud, identity theft, and other problems plaguing the cybersecurity community, and we have an opportunity to share that with our foreign partners. And the opposite is also true. Our foreign partners have found ways to tackle problems, leverage technologies in different ways, really evaluate and analyze information differently, and we have the opportunity to learn from that.

So it brings that cross-pollination, that wonderful innovation that we can get through collaboration that otherwise we would have missed out on. So, United States is a large market. We have a lot of sectors that could really benefit from this information. And it's good to have more partners, not less.

Christina: So, if you're interested in getting to know The Intelligence Network and the great work that the team is doing, you can go to BAE Systems and search for The Intelligence Network. We're looking for people of all sorts, from security professionals, architects, CISOs, people who have a passion in security and want to help solve the challenges we have at hand.