As the advancement of the Internet of Things exposes attack points for cyber threats and hackers adapt to the new cloud environments, cyber security is finding that it needs to be proactive in creating safer operational spaces for the enterprise.

One of the best ways to accomplish that is through establishing advance threat protection that is live, up-to-date, and distributed across all the threat vectors, according to Darius Goodall (pictured), director of security products at Barracuda Networks Inc. Goodall spoke with John Furrier, co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio in Palo Alto, California, during the RSA Conference 2017, taking place this week in San Francisco.

“We’ve heard of the ICUs at hospitals being locked up, libraries [going offline], hotels with the electronic key card entry being locked up,” Goodall said as he outlined some of the ways in which the increasingly networked nature of the world is opening up targets for digital attack.

And even the latest forms of malware are continuing to mutate. For instance, there’s now “ranscam,” something that “looks like ransomware, feels like ransomware … but at the end of the day, it destroys your files,” whether or not the ransom payment was made, Goodall explained.

But even in such volatile times for security, there are practices that can help security organizations and their customers fight back. One of the simplest but most effective ways is to share information about where attacks come from, Goodall said.

“It’s one thing for you to understand or see an attack … but then, how do you leverage that information?” asked Goodall. “Once we detect a piece of ransomware coming in on an attack vector, we need to make that information available.”

As that sharing of information enables identification of threat sources, there has to be a way to share that data as quickly as possible. “Nobody wants to wait for that download,” Goodall noted, so getting that protection out to everyone immediately is the goal.

Detection, prevention and recovery are the categories into which Barracuda arranges its security efforts, with Goodall urging companies with any sort of online presence to make sure that their web infrastructures are secure. For those that are entering the cloud world, some environments are secured, but the files uploaded aren’t necessarily secured. That gap in coverage can be a dangerous one.

Though the days ahead are bound to be fraught with all kinds of cyberattacks, even the companies without enough capital to invest in a dedicated cybersecurity company’s support can take steps to give themselves some coverage, Goodall said. As one initial step, he recommended that every company take the effort to just “take a step back and analyze your threat [situation]” and continue operations with that improved understanding as a guide.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the RSA Conference 2017.

Photo by SiliconANGLE