349: Steve Durbin – When Governments Shift: Reimagining UK Cyber Strategy and Business Resilience

Today, Steve returns to Business Matters with Juliette Foster. The United Kingdom has a new Prime Minister: Andy Burnham, and Steve speaks with Juliette from a cyber and business perspective about what to expect from the nation's new leadership. They also discuss the importance of digital inclusion, what businesses should do to remain in control in times of uncertainty, cyber insurance, and more.

Key Takeaways:

1. As more of world becomes digitally enabled, cyber becomes increasingly important from a national defense and resilience perspective.
2. More organizations are moving to scenario-based planning to manage uncertainty.
3. Governments must understand the complexity of their large projects and make sure they’ve got the best people working on them.

Tune in to hear more about:

1. The importance of digital inclusion (4:17)
2. Solving the cyber skills shortage (20:29)
3. How cyber insurance is changing and why it matters (22:58)

Standout Quotes:

1. “For a lot of people, digital inclusion means handing people a smartphone and saying, “There you go.” It isn't just about access, it's about the knowledge that you need to actually make use of the technology that you have access to.” - Steve Durbin
2. “You want to try to maintain a solid state in between somebody saying they're going to make the acquisition and take you over, and when that completes. [...] Because the resilience is core to the effectiveness going forward of that organization. All too often, there's a tendency to fiddle with it, play with it a little bit. No. We need to understand exactly what our core components are, the crown jewels, how are we protecting them, how are they going to be impacted over a certain period by any change that goes on, and what can we do to make sure that we're doing everything possible to preserve the integrity of those crown jewels so that we can continue to operate. The last thing you want is somebody coming in and actually changing that during a handover period.” - Steve Durbin
3. “From a cyber-specific perspective, one of the things that has infuriated me constantly over the years is this obsession that we seem to have that people have to be trained in the technical skills in order to have a cyber career. That is absolute nonsense. Because the sorts of skills that you need could equally be well found with people with arts degrees. It's that curiosity. It's that ability to be able to be creative.” - Steve Durbin

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From the Information Security Forum, the leading authority on cyber, information security, and risk management.