With tens of thousands of cybersecurity professionals attending the RSA Conference in San Francisco, California, this month, the chances were good that a few of them celebrated birthdays. But it’s unlikely that any of them celebrated a birthday as recent as Michael Daniel (pictured), because his milestone was one year old.

As the president and chief executive officer of the Cyber Threat Alliance, Daniel celebrated the 12-month anniversary of his organization’s start last April with six founding member companies. It has since grown to represent 17 firms, including Cisco Inc., Fortinet Inc., Symantec Corp. and McAfee Inc.

“Part of the idea behind the CTA is that no matter how big you are, no matter how broad your coverage is as a cybersecurity company, no one individual cybersecurity company ever sees all of the threats all of the time,” Daniel said. “It’s really finding a way for the cybersecurity company to fit it into their business model, to be able to consume the threat intelligence at a speed that matters, and really be able to bake it into their products.”

Daniel spoke with Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, at the RSA Conference in San Francisco, California. They discussed the threat-sharing model for CTA’s member companies and the importance of speed and scale in cybersecurity. (* Disclosure below.)

Sharing threat intelligence

The amount of information being shared by CTA’s participating member companies is significant. The non-profit organization recently disclosed that more than 65,000 packages of threat intelligence were shared per day. And the companies don’t have a choice.

“We require that all of our members must share,” Daniel explained. “You can’t just join the alliance and consume information; you have to actually give in order to receive.”

The celebration of CTA’s one-year anniversary at the RSA Conference coincided with the news that a tech accord had been endorsed by 34 companies, supported by CTA members Cisco and Symantec, to update international law and safeguard citizens from cyberattacks. The announcement provided further evidence that companies understand the need for an urgent, proactive and comprehensive approach when it comes to combating cyber threats.

“In order to better protect their customers and clients, sharing threat intelligence at speed and at scale is a very fundamental part of being a much better cybersecurity company,” Daniel concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the RSA Conference. (* Disclosure: Fortinet Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Fortinet nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE