Security News > 2020 > February > RSA President Rohit Ghai on 'The Human Element'

While the cybersecurity industry has increasingly focused on the roles artificial intelligence and machine learning can play in thwarting attacks, the humans behind the algorithms remain both points of strength and weakness, says RSA President Rohit Ghai, who kicked off the Tuesday keynote presentations at the RSA 2020 conference in San Francisco.

Ghai offered lessons learned from the 2018 ransomware attack against Atlanta, which ended up paying over $17 million for clean-up and recovery after deciding not to give into the demand of the attackers, who had originally demanded a ransom of $51,000 in bitcoin to unlock the systems.

Ghai says the important point to remember is that that the attackers did not achieve their financial goals, and the city, in turn, implemented better back-up and recovery systems.

"We don't have to win for the attackers to lose," Ghai says.

Ghai also addressed the expansion of the attack surface as a result of creating applications that do not take security into consideration during the development and production phases.

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https://www.inforisktoday.com/rsa-president-rohit-ghai-on-the-human-element-a-13770